


This Slender Thread

by uleanblue



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, F/M, Humor, Romance, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 12:49:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uleanblue/pseuds/uleanblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU after Chosen. Buffy is transported through a portal to a different time, and unwittingly becomes involved with the man destined to become the darkest wizard of all time--while attempting to avert yet another apocalypse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Prologue**

**October 2003**

"So...What’s up with the total lack of action tonight? It's like they all called out or something."

Faith didn't just sound disappointed. She sounded slightly pissed off.

Buffy glanced at her companion, a smile ghosting across her face as they moved in tandem through empty darkened streets, their synchronous footfalls echoing across pavement. Faith was right, though. As far as slayage went, the night had been dead, no pun intended. 

"I'm sure we'll find something dust-worthy tonight." She replied. “It’s not like vampires need sick days. ” 

"Hope so. Gotta work off some _tension_." Faith looked at Buffy meaningfully, her lip curled into an all too familiar smirk.

"You and me both."

Buffy doubted that she and Faith were talking about precisely the same _kind_ of tension, but right now she could totally relate to that, and stress, and well, pretty much any word that was the opposite of _relaxed_.

It was ironic, really.

Shutting down the Hellmouth and saving the world _yet again_ should count for something, right?

Buffy could close her eyes and recall that _moment_ , that brief, shining moment after defeating The First when the intense euphoria of survival, of new possibilities had flared with incandescent brightness. They had stood, all of them, gazing at the Crater Formerly Known as Sunnydale, and her future had appeared as open, limitless and unfettered as the vast expanse that stretched out before her.

Apparently, though, no good deed went unpunished.

There was the hectic training schedule, the daily insanity that arose from refereeing a group of super powered teen girls forced to compete for limited bathroom space, and of course, an appalling _lack_ of decent shopping. That in itself was a problem of potentially apocalyptic proportions.

Which is why she and Faith now patrolled the quiet cobbled streets of some quaint, picturesque Scottish hamlet whose name she hadn't yet bothered to fully remember, but may have had something to do with pigs. Or was it beer? 

Either way, there was apparently a complete absence of nightlife, human or otherwise. 

Still, at the very least, it got her out of their new headquarters, away from the noise, the crowded dorm-like atmosphere, away from what was quickly becoming the suffocating responsibility of playing mentor and peacemaker to the growing horde of fledgling Slayers. 

Faith shot her a look. "You still not sleeping?"

Buffy drew in a breath. Sometimes it shocked her just how perceptive Faith was underneath that brash exterior. Hell, sometimes it still shocked her that they could actually interact without trying to kill each other. "Not so much. I'm dealing, though."

"Hmm."

They walked on, lapsing into silence. Faith's low key, unintrusive way of asking about the nightmares she'd recently been having was a pleasant contrast from the virtual Spanish Inquisition she’d faced from Giles when she’d first mentioned them. Unlike Giles, Faith wasn’t intently focused on portents, or symbolism, or danger. Just a simple, honest regard for her welfare that stemmed from their symbiotic connection as Slayers. Buffy appreciated it in more ways than she could easily express. 

And she got that it was business as usual for Giles, but the endless questions she couldn’t answer, and all the pensive, concerned hovering were beginning to make her feel rather _stabby_. They were _dreams_. What the hell was she supposed to do? Take notes? 

As far as Buffy was concerned, prophetic dreams were all well and good in theory, but in reality? They sucked. Hard. At first they had just been annoyingly vague and disjointed, but lately the ominous, shadowy dreams were increasing in frequency and intensity, leaving her drained and irritable. 

Buffy knew, deep down, that another Very Bad Thing lurked on the horizon. 

She sighed.

Better change the subject.

"So, when does Robin get back?"

"Not for another week. If I don't burn off some of this energy and kill something soon, I might actually end up _hurting_ him, ya know?" Faith said, leering and making what was quite possibly an inappropriate hand gesture. 

"Oversharing much?" Buffy cut in. 

“Are you kidding?” Faith shot back, incredulous, “come on, that was tame.” 

“Honestly, your version of tame is a little scary. Like, trip to the ER kind of scary.” 

Faith laughed, then waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “Hey, Robin likes it scary. This one time--”

“Again with the oversharing.” Buffy sharply reminded her. 

“All right!” Faith threw up her hands in mock surrender. “I will say this, though,” she said as she reached over her shoulder and drew an elegant, slim katana from its dark polished scabbard. The curved blade glinted in the moonlight; it truly was an exquisitely crafted weapon. “He sure knows how to treat a girl.” Her tone was soft, almost reverent, and to Buffy’s surprise, infused with more feeling than she had ever heard from her. 

“So clearly, the way to your heart isn’t flowers or candy, but edged weapons.” 

“You know it, B.” 

Their pace was slow, almost leisurely as they walked to the end of the block. There was a long row of tightly spaced, narrow cottages with bright, painted wood trim, and neatly thatched roofs that looked like they’d been plucked right from a fairytale. A faint creaking sound caught her attention, and she glanced up to see a weathered wooden sign mounted to a wrought iron bracket overhead. _The Three Broomsticks._ Buffy quirked her lips; she’d definitely have to tell Willow about the place when she returned from her travels. 

As they continued on, the cottages became interspersed with red bricked structures that appeared to be far newer as the buildings thinned out, and the cobbled streets sloped upward, becoming more hilly as they approached the outskirts of the small town. 

Up ahead was a grassy hill dominated by a huge, ancient tree. Under the pale beacon of the autumn moon, Buffy could see the silhouettes of several headstones at the hill’s crest, rising from the ground like thin, bony fingers.

They were making steady progress toward the cemetery when she felt it.

Like a static charge, prickling the hairs on her neck. Buffy paused, mid stride, and cast her awareness outward.

Thin coils of energy roiled and pulsed, dark, malignant and powerful.

"You feel that?" She murmured to Faith.

"I feel....something." Faith closed her eyes. After a moment, she shook her head faintly.

"Not a vamp, that's for sure."

"Just over that hill, I think."

Faith rolled her eyes. "Cemetery. You’d think they’d be a little more imaginative."

Buffy shrugged. “I don’t know, once you’ve beaten the Biggest Big Bad ever, everything else seems kinda...mundane, you know?”

“Yeah. Guess I’m gonna have to work on lowering my expectations.” 

They crept forward, their senses directing them to the source of the energy, eventually taking cover behind a freestanding crypt that stood nestled amongst neat rows of carved, timeworn headstones.

They could hear a deep voice, chanting.

In a small open area there was a large double circle, marked with strange glyphs, painted roughly onto the grass with a dark, viscous substance that looked like blood. Small flaming braziers were placed atop several headstones, casting eerie, flickering shadows over the proceedings. 

More than a half dozen tall, gray, scaly demons stood poised around the circle, each armed with a long handled battle axe. Each of them bore what appeared to be the same marks on their chests that corresponded to the glyphs on the circle. In the center was the chanting figure, arms raised to the inky night sky, a headdress with long, curving, bone-like horns obscuring its features. 

The sour tang of blood hung in the air, mixed with smoke and incense.

It smelled of foulness, and death.

"Fuckin' A," whispered Faith.

Buffy could only nod as a sense of foreboding clutched at her gut. This was big. Too big for just the two of them. "We need backup," she murmured, almost inaudibly.

"On it."

Faith whipped her phone out, the tiny light from the backscreen casting an eerie glow on her features. After a few quiet taps on the keypad, she carefully slid it back into her jacket. “Done.”

Buffy stared at the hooded figure. She felt a sort of hazy recognition, a half formed sense that she should _know_ this, but it was jumbled around in her brain, like pieces of a puzzle she couldn’t fit together. Distantly, she heard someone whisper her name. As each second swept by she remained frozen, silent, as her mind whirled and struggled to process the tableau before her before the sense of insane, frantic dread paralyzed her completely.

"Buffy!" 

She snapped back to reality. 

There was an urgent edge to Faith's whisper. "Jesus, B, you with me?"

That instant, scattered fragments of image and memory clicked fully, startlingly into place.

_This. The dreams._

_Oh, shit._

Her eyes widened.

She found her voice, clamped her hand on Faith's wrist. "We have to get out of here. Now!" She breathed urgently.

Faith's expression was hard, questioning, but to Buffy's incredible relief she simply nodded.

"Let's roll, then." 

Without warning there was the harsh sound of ripping fabric. Faith jerked back abruptly, then staggered, a pained hiss escaping her. "What the Fuck!" she croaked, reaching up reflexively across her body with her left hand.

Buffy turned, saw the right shoulder of Faith's jacket was slashed open. Deep, jagged cuts marred her flesh; blood rapidly leaked out, staining her shirt. 

"Faith!" Buffy yelled, all pretense of stealth forgotten. 

A second later Faith cried out and doubled over, clutching her abdomen. Her head whipped up, eyes wide, her mouth set in a tight grimace. When she pulled her hand away from her stomach, it too was bloody. “Aww, _shit_.” 

Instantly, Buffy moved toward her, but Faith waved her off. “No, no! I’m okay!” 

Buffy stood, tensely scanning the area for an impending attack as Faith, clutching her midsection, backed herself up against a headstone before sliding into a seated position. She could sense traces of dark, crackling energy lingering in the air around them. Every single nerve was practically jangling with anticipation, but there was no rush of heavy footfalls, no rustle of weapons, nothing. 

Of course, there didn’t have to be, Buffy realized, when their opponent could use magic to literally tear their flesh open from a distance. Well, she'd be damned if she was going to let some chickenshit loser in a stupid hat take them down after everything they’d been through. A scorching wave of anger coursed through her, then, and her Slayer instincts surged forth, eager for the exhilaration of battle. Her tone was steely. “I’m gonna rip that magician’s horns off and make him _eat_ them.” 

“Never been a big fan of the mojo, myself.” Faith gritted out. With her free hand she reached behind her, unclasped the scabbard and extended the katana toward Buffy. “All you got is your stake,” she explained. “Here. Go introduce Mister Mojo and his buddies to my shiny new friend.” 

Buffy nodded. “Works for me.” 

Buffy snatched up the weapon, then turned and launched herself forward, leaping smoothly to the wide flat top of the nearest stone crypt to gain a better vantage point in the murky darkness. 

One of the demons had broken formation, and was moving toward them. 

Blood had been shed. Buffy thought it only fair to return the favor. 

She dove off the crypt, rolled to her feet, then quickly covered the short distance to reach her target. The demon growled, gripped its axe with both hands and shifted into a combat stance. It barely had a chance to draw back its weapon before Buffy slipped easily through its guard. She knocked the axe aside with a single kick, then thrust the katana deep into its chest. It hung there, body arched in agony, convulsing for a moment until she yanked the blade free; the demon gurgled thickly as it crumpled to the ground.

Her attention snapped to the circle. She stalked over, sword raised. Stationed like sentinels around the circle, the six remaining demons stood unmoving as the sorcerer continued to incant. 

What the hell were they waiting for? 

Suddenly the sorcerer fell silent, then jerked his head up, his dirty, skeletal features twisted into a manic grin. He clapped his hands over his head, once, and the circle and glyphs began to glow. She noticed now that he wore a strange metal amulet, and that the stone in the center was also pulsing with light. 

He spread his arms out, palms up, and shouted. “Eryishon k'shala meh-uhn!” 

Above his head the air shimmered. A crackling, flashing rift appeared.

“Diprecht, Doh-tehenlo Nu-Eryishon!” 

The swirling rift rapidly expanded, tendrils of lightning snaking out in random bursts, and Buffy abruptly found herself buffeted by a powerful gale that threatened to throw her off balance. It was strong, like an undertow, drawing her closer to the vortex. 

The sorcerer stood off to one side, still grinning, apparently unaffected by the pull of the rift, his amulet glowing bright like a beacon. 

He didn’t seem too concerned that his minions were also struggling, their arms flailing against the ever widening vortex.

Buffy decided it was time to wipe that disgustingly smug smile off his face, and smashing his fancy necklace would probably be a good place to start. 

She quickly slid the sword into the sheath on her back, relaxed her limbs and allowed the momentum created by the wind to carry her over to the sorcerer, who stared at her in confusion that shifted into shock when she seized his upper arm in one hand and grabbed the chain holding the amulet. 

“You stupid bitch! What are you doing? Let go!” He yelled as he thrashed in her grip. 

Digging her fingers deeper into the sorcerer’s bony arm, she pulled him down sharply until his face was right at eye level. 

“Call it off!” Buffy growled. “Shut it down!” 

He sneered at her, then spat, “It’s too late!” 

He laughed, then, loud and gloating, then said, “Have fun on the other side.” 

With that, he jerked his body back hard and kicked out, almost dislodging her--but her grip on his arm was like a vise and he was no match for her strength. 

For a brief second Buffy simply stared at him, rage coursing through her like acid, burning and noxious, before coalescing on the point of light on his chest. His eyes widened almost comically when she let go of the chain around his neck and drew back her fist, aiming directly for the amulet. 

“No!” He screamed, shaking his head frantically, “No! You’ll kill us both!” 

Her arm quivered. God, she really wanted to _hurt_ him--the urge to pulp his face was nearly overwhelming--but she managed to stay her fist. Instead, she seized his other arm and held fast. He struggled with a desperation that bordered on hysteria, but she had him trapped. 

One by one the demons became airborne and disappeared as they were sucked into the churning rift. The wind grew fiercer and her clothes flapped and rippled across her body; she had to shout to be heard over the howl. 

“Then it looks like you’re coming along for the ride!”

She felt a flare of satisfaction, even as they were both lifted off their feet from the sheer force of the whirlwind and he was jerked from her grasp.

He wasn’t smiling anymore. 


	2. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

**October 1945**

In the quiet cloister of a moonlit grove, Tom Riddle turned away from the group of black robed young men practicing their spellwork and blew his breath out in a disgusted huff.

Glancing heavenward, he resisted the urge to press the tips of his fingers against his aching temples. The entire evening was proving to be an abysmal exercise in frustration. One simple, bloody spell - that he’d mastered in under an hour. Why couldn’t they grasp it? These men were to be his soldiers, his loyal hounds, the means he would use to cleave his way through the withered, useless hulk of the Ministry. 

He looked back to them, silently appraising their efforts for several minutes before his eyes slid shut in defeat. 

Nearly useless, the lot of them. 

The irony was staggering. That he, the half blood son of the beggared heir of Slytherin himself, raised as a Muggle and completely ignorant of his heritage, should so easily surpass in power and intellect those born and raised within the magical world. 

A jet of crimson light whizzed past his head just then, close enough that he felt the electric prickle of energy across his cheek. He glowered as it slammed into the the side of the majestic oak just behind him, blasting away a generous chunk of tree trunk in a splintering explosion of bark and leaves.

From a purely magical standpoint, the power behind the hex was impressive. Pity the caster was a myopic halfwit. 

With a raised brow, Tom made a show of swiveling his head to stare meaningfully at the tree, then over to the target dummy that was positioned on the opposite side of the clearing. "Well done, Avery!" he drawled, his tone sardonic, "that tree was a damned menace!”

Avery was frozen in place, his wand trembling slightly as he held it extended. 

Snorts of laughter erupted from the other men as Tom stalked over to stand directly in front of Avery, laughter that quickly faded as the mirthful expression abruptly vanished from his face. Looming over him, Tom clasped his fingers around the younger man’s chin, tilted his head back, then quietly said, “it would be tremendously disappointing, Avery, if I had to owl your parents to inform them you’d met with an unfortunate accident, yes?” 

Avery’s head twitched in an abortive nodding motion, but Tom held him immobilized, his fingers clamped down and digging into the flesh of Avery’s face. Oh, he was seriously pissed off now. It would be tempting, and so, so easy to slide his hand down the short distance to Avery’s windpipe and _squeeze_. He leaned in closer, his tone almost conversational as he added, "you need to _focus_...tighten up your wand movements if you want to achieve any degree of accuracy in your casting." 

With barely a glance at the target, Tom deftly flicked his pale yew wand in demonstration. 

"Like _this_ ," he hissed, jerking Avery’s chin to one side so that he could watch the dummy disintegrate in a shower of particles that fluttered delicately to the ground like snow. A pathetic, pleading whimper escaped from Avery, then, so Tom shoved him backwards, causing him to stumble back and fall hard onto hisbackside. “Of course,” he ground out, his voice slowly rising to a shout, “it also helps to point your _bloody_ wand in the _bloody_ right direction!” 

Tom fixed him with a flat, baleful stare. “Should I remind you why you are here?” He asked softly, menacingly, then swept his gaze to each of the young men, who now stood in silent deference. “Why any of you are here?” 

He strode to the center of the clearing. “Have I not wholly dedicated myself to this task? Devoted myself to teaching all of you, guiding you, so that you may become well honed instruments of change--instruments who will restore greatness to the wizarding world?” 

Pointing a finger sharply at Avery, he announced, “At our next meeting, Avery here will serve as our target.”

Avery’s eyes widened, his mouth worked, but no sound came out. 

Tom’s grin was shark-like. “Relax. I promise we won’t hit you with anything... _fatal_.”

No one dared to speak. None of them would be foolish enough to challenge him. 

“Listen to me, all of you. If you are not fully dedicated,” his voice grew louder, more forceful, “if you allow yourself these lapses in concentration, if you _fail_ to unite your mind and purpose with your magic, then you make yourself--no, you make every single one of us a target for those who would stand against us,” he emphasized, allowing his words to resonate through the men who now listened in rapt, reverent attention, “and that....is _unacceptable_.” 

Tom breathed deeply, calmed himself before continuing. “Each of you have sworn an oath in blood to serve me, just as I have pledged my magic to you all, that we shall see a bold, new age come to fruition. I ask - no, I demand from you nothing that I am not willing to give myself.” 

Well, perhaps that wasn’t entirely true, but they certainly didn’t need to know that. What was that saying? You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. 

It was a simple inevitability that some of them would be broken along the way. 

All at once a loud rumble, like distant thunder, echoed through the grove, followed by a whine that quickly grew to an ear splitting shriek. A tight, roiling cloud had coalesced in the air above the cemetery about 50 meters from the forest clearing where he and his knights had gathered to train. 

He watched, mouth set in a thin, tense line as bolts of lightning arced wildly from the cloud to the ground. He could feel its dark energy pulsing outward, skating across his skin and causing him to gasp. The searing, all consuming sensation was familiar, electrifying his senses in a way that reminded him of horcrux magic. 

Oh, this was dark magic indeed.

Then with a concussive whoosh of air that nearly staggered several of his knights as it swept across the field like a great wave, the sky itself was torn open. 

A black, swirling void appeared within the cloud, then an instant later several hulking, gray, horned creatures tumbled through the opening to plunge heavily to the earth, their arrival punctuated by brief but intense flashes of light. They were wearing dark brown leather kilts with matching gauntlets, each of them armed with huge, lethal looking battle axes. They lumbered to their feet, raising their weapons and assuming defensive crouches, as if waiting. 

Abraxas Malfoy, a tall, sturdy young man with blonde hair so pale it appeared white in the moonlight, moved to stand next to him, his clean, patrician features locked in an expression hovering somewhere between trepidation and horror. "Bloody Hell, Tom. What are they?"

Tom shook his head, staring out at the spectacle unfurling before him with the sort of awestruck wonder he hadn’t experienced since the very first time he saw Albus Dumbledore perform magic in front of him. “I don’t know,” he answered, breathlessly, “I’ve never seen the like.” He ignored Malfoy’s sharp, sudden glance in his direction. At this moment he didn’t care if his well controlled facade slipped. Everything around him fell away as he watched, wholly absorbed, practically buzzing inside with a heady mix of adrenaline tinged with taut anticipation. 

An idea was swiftly germinating, fueled in part by the intoxicating dark energy that still crackled over his senses. These creatures were unlike anything he’d ever encountered in either his travels, or within the ancient, obscure texts he scoured at every available opportunity. And he wanted- needed to know more. 

“I’m going to get closer. I’ll summon you if I have need, but...don’t hold your breath,” he quipped, flashing Malfoy a wild, unrestrained grin that bordered on manic. 

Malfoy held his tongue, acknowledging him with a single nod, his eyes still locked on the rift. 

The wind whipped his robes about as he began to make his way toward the edge of the clearing.

Just then, the swirling vortex flashed with light again. 

"Tom!" Nott's voice was tight with alarm as he pointed to the vortex. "Something else is coming through!"

Two figures hurtled through the open rift and crashed to the earth. One was a thin robed man, a horned headdress askew atop his head. His face was set in a scowl as he hauled himself up onto his hands and knees. He immediately scrambled off to one side and began to fumble through his robes. The demons moved toward the man, and for a moment Tom thought they would attack him, but the robed man hastily shouted a guttural command in an unfamiliar language, and they snapped into a loose half circle facing outwards from him.

The second figure, a petite young woman with long blonde hair, hit the ground, then rolled gracefully to her feet, drawing a slim, slightly curved blade from a sheath strapped to her back. 

She didn’t seem the least bit phased that she was hopelessly outnumbered. 

He watched as without hesitation, the woman advanced on the closest of the demons and swept her sword in a quick, horizontal stroke, slicing deep across its midsection. As it sank to its knees she skewered it with a decisive thrust through its throat. The others rushed in, surrounding her, and he increased his pace as she began to battle in earnest. 

His eyes remained locked on her as she engaged with the creatures with a fluid, economical grace that was truly a marvel to behold. Who was she? And with a Muggle sword, no less? The odds of her surviving did not appear favorable, despite her apparent skill. 

Damn it. He was still too far away. He would have to apparate in if there was to be any hope of saving her.

* * *

Buffy took down the closest demon, then faced next head on as two others rushed to flank her.   
She dodged the axe that swung heavily down, then arced her blade high and across, decapitating the beast. She dropped to a crouch and spun, kicking her leg straight out and sweeping the two flanking demons off their feet. Springing back to her feet she drove the sword downward, piercing one of the prone demons through the chest. 

She jerked the weapon free, and as she pivoted she took a kick to the chest that sent her flying onto her back. Instantly, she rolled away from an axe that whistled downward next to her head to become embedded in the ground. She snapped her legs back, flipping herself up and using her momentum to slam herself feet first into the demon who had just regained its feet, knocking him back down again before she finished him with a slash to his neck. 

Buffy spun and raised her blade just in time to block a hard blow; she used the demon’s greater weight and momentum to her advantage, twisting her body as the demon moved in. She brought her elbow up behind her, hard, jabbing the demon in the solar plexus, then turned and slammed a solid left hook into his jaw. As it reeled backwards she stabbed it in the belly. She yanked the katana free, then took the last demon down with a vicious slice down its front that nearly eviscerated it. 

In less than five minutes she was done, but her instincts were still screaming at her. 

It was _too_ easy. 

Buffy advanced on the sorcerer who stood in front of her, regarding her with a strange, inscrutable smile. Neither of them noticed several black robed figures that materialized, silent as smoke, in a perimeter around them. 

Her left hand shot out, grabbing the base of one curved horn, and she ripped the bulky headdress off the sorcerer’s head. 

And froze. 

It was Ethan Rayne. 

He was incredibly thin, almost emaciated, and dirty, and Buffy wondered how in the world she had literally stared him right in the face only minutes before, and yet failed to recognize him. 

He scrubbed a hand through sweaty, close cropped hair and grinned at her. “Hello, darling. Miss me?” 

“Ethan.” She whispered. 

Her stunned disbelief slowly drained away as a cold, sickening sensation churned its way up through her belly. “This whole thing was a trap.” 

And she had walked right into it, even after dreaming about it. For one dizzying second her emotions were a dark and ominous whirl, but she ruthlessly clamped them down, shoved them to the farthest corner of her consciousness to be dealt with later. 

If nothing else, she was so going to kick his ass. 

Buffy squared her shoulders and focused like a laser on Ethan. “So. You’ve decided to add _fugitive_ to your long list of dubious accomplishments.” Her tone was derisive. 

A large portion of Ethan’s composure melted away. “I’m no fugitive! I was _released_ from that stinking shithole of a prison you and that overgrown boy scout left me to rot in!” he growled in reaction, jabbing a finger at her. Buffy noticed then that on his left hand he wore a studded leather gauntlet. The armored fingers were articulated, with sharp pointed metal tips, and it stirred in her a faint, fluttering moment of unease. 

After a moment he appeared to contain himself, then he asked slyly, “Aren’t you going to ask me how I got out?”

“Not really interested, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“All I really needed was good legal representation.” 

He appeared smug now, almost gleeful, despite the fact that she’d destroyed all the demons and he was alone. It was disturbing, the way he seemed to vacillate between rage and this almost weird happiness, and the manic glint in his eyes was just so very off from what she remembered of him. 

She regarded him with wary skepticism. “Is that supposed to mean something? Is that what this is about? You’re just a _bitch_ getting payback?” 

“That was the general plan.” He said, then appeared slightly affronted. “Well, not the bitch part...or getting dragged here, for that matter.” 

“Then maybe your plan should have called for better minions, because they were totally lame.” She shot back. “I barely even broke a sweat.” 

“Willing sacrifices, all of them.” He replied dismissively. “Though I admit it’s disappointing they didn’t make a slightly better showing for themselves. They had excellent references, too.” He added. “And now, I should be wrapping this up and getting home. I really have quite the backlog of DVDs to catch up on.” 

He said it so casually, with such matter of factness that Buffy wasn’t prepared as he abruptly curled his gloved left hand into a claw, and raked it through the air; first in a sharp sideways motion, then down and across. 

Searing, white hot pain exploded across her back. She gasped and staggered gracelessly, nearly dropping her katana, then cried out as deep, claw like wounds opened diagonally from her right shoulder to her chest. She could feel a heavy cascade of warm wetness down her body, trickling between her breasts, soaking the back of her pants. She sank down and fell forward onto her hands and knees, panting. Saliva pooled in her mouth; she fought the urge to vomit. 

A sudden shout from Ethan prompted her to jerk her head upright. 

A tall figure in a hooded black robe stood, arm outstretched, a thin, pale stick grasped in their hand. 

Whoever it was, they had impeccable timing. 

Throwing off her light headedness, she pushed to her feet, propelled her protesting body closer to Ethan as he shouted, “Who the fuck are you?” at the stranger. 

With a subtle, almost barely perceptible motion the stranger twisted their wrist. A sparking jet of red light shot toward Ethan, striking him in the leg. Ethan hissed, and raised his gloved hand. 

He was distracted, and didn’t react in time as she lunged at him.

Holding the sword in both hands she swiftly brought it down, chopping his gauntleted hand off at the wrist. He screamed, long and loud, blood spraying out in an arc, his face contorting into an agonized grimace.

“I could say the gloves are off, Ethan, but that might be a bit obvious, even for me,” she snarled. 

He stumbled back a few steps, clutching the stump of his wrist against his body, then he spat out a word in a language Buffy didn’t understand. The amulet on his chest flared to life, and with a shimmering swirl of energy he vanished. 

“No!”

* * *

More black robed men emerged from the shadows. There were easily a dozen of them. 

Crap. 

She stood, warily eying the hooded men who surrounded her.

Buffy clenched her teeth, tried to shift her katana, but her arm just spasm-ed uselessly, refusing to cooperate. It was a wonder she could maintain her grip on the sword at all. Ethan's little glove of evil had sliced through the muscles in her back and shoulder with brutal efficiency, effectively disarming her. And with her adrenaline now depleted, the impact of her rather substantial blood loss swiftly became apparent.

There was a good chance she was about to black out, with the added bonus of doing so in front of potential enemies.

It was the icing on the cake of her shitty night.

Already, the edges of her vision were beginning to gray out, and it was a struggle not to sway on her feet. Buffy tamped down the desperate, sinking weakness that threatened to overwhelm her, and waited for them to make a move.

The tall one who had confronted Ethan stepped forward and pulled his hood back, then spread his hands in a gesture of conciliation.

Even here, with nothing more than moonlight highlighting his features, Buffy saw he was young--much younger than she'd expected. And he absolutely nailed the definition of tall, dark, and handsome. Beautiful, even--all dark, wavy hair, pale skin, and fine features.

"Easy, Miss,” he said, gently, as if trying to calm her, “My name is Tom."

He moved forward incrementally, palms facing up, almost supplicating. "We mean you no harm."

"Right." She scoffed, shocked at how steady her voice remained, even though she felt on the verge of collapse. "Men in black robes, at night, in a cemetery. Not really getting a campfire sing-along vibe here."

He smiled at her, then said reassuringly, "We have no intention of hurting you, Miss..." He paused a moment, expectant.

"Summers." She whispered. "Buffy Summers."

God, she was so tired.

At that moment she wanted so much to believe him, to trust him, no matter that her tired, fuzzy brain was screaming that they were very likely not of the good. He had attacked Ethan, though, diverted him before he could finish her off...

He simply stood there, his arms still spread out as if beckoning to her. His eyes were dark, his gaze intense, almost hypnotic and Buffy briefly imagined she'd felt a whispered caress of words across her mind. A wave of drowsy warmth washed over her, and she swayed, yet remained standing. The urge to simply close her eyes, to curl up and sleep was staggering.

She wasn’t sure if she imagined his eyes widening a fraction, before narrowing slightly. He stepped closer to her then, closer, into her personal space and Buffy tried to warn him to back off, but she could no longer connect her brain to her mouth to get the words out. 

Everything else fell away as her perception contracted, began to fade and darken, and she hadn’t noticed that the other men had tightened the circle around her, nor did she feel her sword slip out of her now numb fingers to clatter on hard ground. And then she didn’t feel anything at all as she slid quietly into the darkness. 

Tom reached forward, instinctively, as Buffy's knees buckled. She sagged against him, his hands catching in the wet, ragged fabric of her shirt. She was deathly pale, the entire back portion of her clothing soaked with blood.

He gently cupped one hand behind her head as he lowered her to the ground. Her breathing was labored, uneven, and he could feel warm blood seeping over his fingers from the wounds on her back.

She felt tiny and fragile in his arms, yet she had just slaughtered half a dozen demons with a practiced ease that spoke of undeniable power. Even standing before him, bloody, weakened and disheveled, her presence was commanding. She was a mystery, one he would not have an opportunity to unravel if she died here. 

He knelt down next to her, taking in the details of her strange attire, then carefully rolled her onto her side and traced his wand against her back and shoulder, murmuring an incantation. The bleeding slowed to a faint, sluggish ooze. Satisfaction flared through him as he then held his fingers against her neck, only to give way to a sick, swooping sensation in his abdomen as he registered her rapidly weakening heartbeat. _Damn!_

_It wasn’t enough. Not enough. She was bleeding out. He was going to lose her. No - he couldn’t -_

_He would not lose. He’d be damned if he was going to allow Death to claim her._

He snapped his head up. “Black! I need blood replenishing potion. _Now_.”

The young man rushed to his side, dropped to his knees next to him, then plucked a thin vial from a small leather pouch on his belt. Tom took it, flicked the stopper out with his thumb, then slowly tipped the liquid into the woman’s mouth. Still focused on his task, he murmured to Black, “Do you have dittany? I’ll need it later.” 

Black withdrew a tiny bottle, handed it to him wordlessly. He pocketed it, then spread his palm flat across her back and focused, pouring the magic of the most powerful healing charm he knew directly into her, spidery tendrils of energy that coursed through her; faint, glowing dots of magic moved under her skin, and to his enormous relief the bleeding finally tapered off completely. 

Blowing out a sigh, Tom sat back on his haunches, then pressed two sticky fingers to the pulsepoint on her neck. Still a bit thready, but even. It would have to do for the time being. 

Carefully he scooped her into his arms and got to his feet. “Black. Remain here. I want to know the moment anyone arrives to investigate.” He levelled a hardened stare at the young man. “You are not to be seen. Malfoy, with me. The rest of you are dismissed.“ 

As the robed men swiftly disapparated he turned to Abraxas and directed, “Bring the sword and that glove to my flat.” 

With the woman tightly cradled against him, he turned on the spot and disappeared.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**October 2003**

With barely a whisper of displaced air, three cloaked figures materialized in the center of Hogsmeade cemetery. 

The men stood in the moonlit darkness; alert, poised in a defensive triangle, wands held aloft as they assessed their surroundings. Apart from the soft breeze rustling the leaves of a large oak tree that guarded over rows of ancient, timeworn headstones, the atmosphere of the cemetery appeared to be one of hushed, unbroken tranquility. 

Several long seconds ticked by as they remained silent and still, intensely focused as they each scanned back and forth across the long rows of shadowed headstones. Only when it became clear that no attack was immediately forthcoming did the tension in their postures subside. 

The silence was broken when Ron groaned quietly and muttered, “Merlin’s Bloody Beard! What is that _smell?_ ” 

Harry nodded, trying not to gag at the eye-watering stench that had hit him and his fellow aurors in the face the moment they’d apparated. There was something terribly _off_ here, though, and it wasn’t just the repulsive odor of decay that hung in the air like a blanket. 

All around him, the air itself was charged with magical residue, heavy and electric, like after a storm, only....dark. Tainted. It prickled sharply over his senses, leaving him tense and uneasy.

Glancing at Ron and Cormac he said, “You feel that?” 

Cormac made a face, squinting into the darkness as if trying to see an object off in the distance. “Feel it? I can almost _taste_ it. Bloody awful.” 

“Right, then. Let’s do this. Look sharp.” 

They each took a single step forward, then another, expanding their circle, flicking their wands in unison with the rhythmic, effortless precision of a well oiled machine. Instantly, waves of sparkling energy swept outward from where they stood, illuminating the graveyard in a bright blue glow as light cascaded over carved headstones and mossy crypts. 

It was a _mess_. 

A large circle of burnt grass smoldered nearby, and a number of guttering braziers lay scattered amongst a layer of windswept leaves, broken twigs and small bits of debris as if a tornado had whipped through part of the cemetery. He paused, noting a few pieces of statuary nearby had toppled off their bases. Tracks scored the soft earth behind each one, as if the statues had been dragged toward the circle. 

Just ahead Harry could make out a dark mass sprawled on the ground.

As the three of them approached, it became clear that whatever lay there wasn’t human. The corpse of the creature was large, bloated and grayish, with horns coming out of its head that vaguely resembled those of a bull. It wore brown leather armor over tough, scaly looking skin--and it had a gaping wound in its chest. 

Ron coughed, hard, his face scrunched up in distaste. “Well, mates. Here’s our lovely smell right here,” he rasped out. 

“What manner of beast is that, do ya think?” 

Harry eyed the enormous, long handled axe next to the corpse and shook his head. “Don’t know. Dark creature, possibly? Never seen one that carries that kind of weaponry, though.”

Ron approached the body and knelt, directing his lit wand toward its face as he examined the creature, then commented, “Either way, our boy here’s clearly not local.” 

“You sure it’s even a boy? Cormac tossed out as he methodically swept over the area with his wand. 

“You’re welcome to flip up its kilt and find out for y’self.” Ron fired back without looking up from his work. 

Harry shot Cormac a stern, disbelieving look. Bloody Hell. Brilliant aurors as they were, at times they were like a pair of twelve year olds. He really did not want to have to have a discussion regarding proper investigational protocol with them _again_. 

Cormac had the decency to appear suitably chastened. “I’ll take your word for it,” he mumbled. 

As Cormac moved past them to inspect the scorched remains of the circle more closely, Harry dropped to a crouch next to Ron and studied the creature’s armor. He gestured to its torso, observing, “Looks like something was painted here on his chest, but I can’t make it out.” 

Cormac’s voice carried over the short distance to them. He was bent over, scrutinizing the markings, all business once again. “There was some sort of ritual performed here, I’d wager, but I’m not familiar with the runes on this circle at all.” He paused, then added, “Some serious shit went down here, lads. Feels off just _lookin_ at it.” 

Harry and Ron quickly exchanged a look. 

That someone was bold enough to conduct a mysterious dark ritual in such a staid, secure village as Hogsmeade, and in such close proximity to his beloved Hogwarts--his metaphorical home turf-- was deeply troubling. 

He quickly rifled through a number of possible scenarios in his mind, the implications of each becoming more problematic as his thoughts went down the line. 

He could probably rule out some random, inexperienced tosser messing about with the Dark Arts right off the bat--the presence of the creature indicated that, though honestly, that brought up an entire set of questions of its own. What the hell was it? Where had it come from, and who killed it? 

And why here? Hogsmeade was hardly a hotbed of nefarious activity. More like the opposite, really. No, individuals seeking to explore the darker aspects of magic still tended to gravitate to the seedier, more secretive establishments located in places like Knockturn. All manner of dubious business affairs could be carried out, no questions asked. 

Still. Harry couldn’t shake the feeling that something more significant was at play here, more than the usual fare of artifact peddlers and suspected Death Eater sympathizers they were usually dispatched to deal with. If he could only put his finger on it. 

A message, perhaps? 

It could very well mean that someone, or something, wanted to capture their attention. A new player in town, looking to leave their mark. 

Or perhaps their calling card. 

But who?

He was fairly certain he wouldn't like the answer. 

Harry’s jaw tightened as he tried to clear his head. Like the angry, dissonant buzzing of bees in his ears, the dark, toxic energy lingering in the air really wasn’t helping him focus. 

Ron finished running his wand over the creature, and sat back on his haunches, shaking his head. “This is bloody bizarre,” he said, his tone perplexed, “our bloke here died less than half an hour ago, but look at him,” he said, aiming his wand at its face, “he’s beginning to putrefy, and _rapidly_. I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

Sure enough, as though they were watching a strange time lapse video, the creature’s skin turned black and began to peel away from its extremities, muscle and tissue collapsing as its skeletal structure grew more pronounced. Ron, smartly, didn’t hesitate. He jumped up, whipped out his camera and snapped a series of pictures in rapid succession. 

Harry, still kneeling, watched in appalled fascination as within minutes, the creature decomposed to a flaky, ash like substance before his eyes, the flash of the camera illuminating the process in garish, lightning like bursts, igniting in his brain like an epiphany. A brisk wind swept through the cemetery then, dispersing the ash far across the grounds until no trace of it remained. If Ron hadn't captured the process on film, they'd be hard pressed to prove it had even existed. 

Suddenly he knew, with sickening clarity, what the unfurling chain of the night’s events would look like. 

They would hand all their photographs and evidence over to the Unspeakables, who might or might not be able to decipher some meaning from them. Words such as _inexplicable_ and _random_ and _isolated_ would be ascribed to the appearance of the unknown Dark creatures, which meant that unless said creature was actually battering down the doors of the Ministry itself, they couldn’t be arsed to investigate its potential significance. 

The Ministry bureaucrats still tended to be rather dismissive towards anything that didn’t fit within their narrow parameters. 

Then the case would no longer be in their hands, and without viable leads or suspects the investigation would most likely be closed. All the paperwork would simply disappear into a file, buried in a drawer that would never see the light of day again. 

And that would be the end of it. 

Of course, he could always make waves. He did, after all, still have clout, despite frequently butting heads with his supervisor Robards. He could push the issue, perhaps enlist Hermione’s help to identify the symbols from the circle. And then…... _and then someone would carefully, helpfully suggest that maybe, just maybe, you were adversely affected by certain, traumatic parallels with your past, and were seeing things that simply weren’t there._

Harry scoffed quietly to himself. 

If he pursued this, there was a distinct possibility that it would be like Fifth Year all over again. 

Well. He’d been right then too, hadn’t he?

A sound came to them, soft and breathy as a sigh, barely audible over the wind, jolting Harry from his thoughts. Cormac abruptly glanced up, his face screwed up in concentration. “D’ya hear that?” 

Instantly, wordlessly, Harry flicked his wand in the general direction of the noise. A faint glow appeared from behind several rows of headstones. 

Someone was in the cemetery with them. _Damnit!_

Why hadn’t he ruled out the presence of possible suspects as soon as they arrived? He could curse himself out for being distracted later. 

The three aurors stalked toward the glowing spot, casting silencing charms to mask their movements. Harry silently motioned for them to separate as they moved to flank whoever might be hiding. Whoever it was didn’t appear to be moving. Perhaps they didn’t yet realize they’d been detected. 

He gripped his wand tight as he approached the gravestone closest to their target. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ron and Cormac slipping into position. 

Wands out, they sprang from behind their respective covers in a swift, decisive movement only to find a young woman slumped, apparently unconscious, against a headstone. Long, glossy chestnut hair partially obscured her face as she sat propped, a large vertical smear of blood on the surface of the headstone behind her. Cormac instantly knelt and flicked his wand over her, assessing the extent of her injuries; deep, jagged lacerations marred her shoulder and belly, as if she’d been mauled by an animal. She stirred faintly and moaned softly as if in distress. 

A witness. They’d found a witness. 

She was dressed in Muggle clothing, though, which raised a number of troubling questions. Who was she, and what in Merlin’s name was she doing here? 

After a moment, Cormac said briskly, “She’s lost too much blood to treat here. We’ll need to get her to Mungo’s right away.” 

Ron was scanning the ground beside her. “I don’t see a wand. She a Muggle, you think?” 

Her eyes snapped open, then, wild and slightly unfocused. She lurched upright into a sitting position. She stared blankly ahead, and for a second, Harry wondered if she even registered their presence-- until she swung her fist in a wide, flailing backhand arc that caught Cormac directly under the chin. 

And sent him sailing backward a considerable distance through the air. 

The woman surged unsteadily to her feet. She was highly agitated, disoriented, her dark eyes darting around, searching. “Buffy!” she cried out, her voice urgent, desperate. She clutched her bloody abdomen with her left hand, stumbling toward where the circle of burned grass lay. 

_Who the Hell was Buffy?_

With his hands held out in a placating gesture, Ron advanced toward her. “Hey, Miss. Easy now.” 

Faster than he thought possible given her injuries, she whipped around, slamming into Ron’s middle with a powerful roundhouse kick. Harry watched, horrified, as Ron flew back several meters, hitting the ground with an audible Oof!, then rolling like a ragdoll until his body smacked into a headstone. 

“Ron!” 

Witness or not, Harry wasn’t taking any more chances. He jabbed his wand toward the woman. _Stupefy_. She staggered, grunting loudly, but she didn’t go down. 

He did it again. Nothing. 

Bloody Hell. 

She whirled on him, dark eyes blazing and ferocious, face set in a snarl, and he felt his insides go absolutely cold.

Pointing his wand once more, he desperately focused every molecule of his being on his casting and prayed it would work. 

Like a puppet with its strings cut, she collapsed, face down, onto the ground. 

By now Cormac had regained his footing. “What in the _bloody fuck_ is she?” he growled. His lower lip and chin were dripping with blood; he must have bitten himself hard when she punched him. He swiped at it angrily with the back of his gloved hand, then tapped his wand to his mouth, vanishing the cut. 

“She’s no Muggle, that’s for sure.” Harry stated with certainty as he made his way over to where Ron was slowly, painfully raising himself onto his hands and knees. 

”Maybe she’s in league with that thing we found.” Cormac said accusingly, as he followed Harry. Standing on either side of him, they each looped an arm under Ron’s elbows and helped hoist him to his feet. 

“We won’t know anything until we question--” 

“Bloody Hell, Potter! She attacked us!” Cormac cut him off, his tone growing louder and progressively more strident. 

Harry raised his voice in turn. “Calm yourself, McClaggen. We’re not jumping to--”

The sound of screeching brakes suddenly cut through the air, loud and jarring, followed by the slamming of car doors. 

Ron swiveled toward the sound, alarmed. “Is that a car? Here?” The movement made him wince, and he gingerly rubbed his side. “ _Awww_ , think I cracked a bloody rib,” he muttered. 

From the narrow lane that wound along the grassy border of the cemetery they saw two young women, a tall, willowy redhead and a shorter, powerfully built black woman sprinting up the hill directly toward them, trailed by a tall, middle aged man with glasses, wearing a backpack. Like the dark haired woman laying unconscious on the ground, they too wore Muggle clothing. 

Catching the glint of a silver blade in the moonlight he could also see the women rushing at them now were _armed_ , however, the man following them held no weapon; in his hands was a small, intricately carved wooden box. 

In Harry’s mind, the needle on the giant scale of _Things That Could Possibly Go Wrong_ suddenly shot into the zone that hovered precariously between _Potentially Awful_ and _Completely, Irredeemably Buggered._

Cormac stared at them quizzically, as if he was having difficulty processing what he was seeing. “Is that a crossbow?” He readied himself, raising his wand, and Harry tensed, remembering then that Cormac had far less experience with Muggles than he and Ron. None of this was adding up at all, though. It was impossible for a Muggle to even find Hogsmeade…His mind raced. 

_But are they even Muggles? How did they know where to_... And with a flash of insight, it clicked. 

Without preamble, he blurted, “They’re here for the woman.”

“What?” 

Merlin, they were _fast_. There was no chance for him to even reply, for in seconds the two females were on top of them. 

Harry heard the black woman shout, “You! Get away from her!” as she positioned herself between the unconscious woman and the three men. She radiated a fierce, potent hostility, leveling the crossbow at Ron and Cormac; they both stood defensively, wands raised. 

He was about to open his mouth to speak, but the collar of his robes were abruptly twisted and jerked upward, constricting his neck as he found himself staring down into the angry face of the redhead, and he realized his feet were no longer touching the ground. 

And that she was holding him suspended in the air _with one arm_. 

The man had a wary intensity to him, though his appearance was nondescript-- benign, even. He opened the wooden box and withdrew a clear glass orb slightly larger than his fist. He spoke a single word in a deep, clear, commanding voice, and the orb began to glow. 

_They have magic_. 

The next few seconds unspooled with the sharp, surreal quality of a dream. 

There was a chaotic burst of shouting from Ron and Cormac. Harry thrashed, uselessly, struggling to dislodge the woman’s steely grip on his clothing when a few colorful jets of light flared at the edges of his vision. 

The redhead yelped and recoiled as if absorbing a blow; they’d managed to strike her with a hex, yet she was still standing, gripping him by his robes as if nothing had happened. Just like the dark haired woman had. Blood began to hammer in his ears like a drum, and he fought to contain a spiraling sense of panic. This was…..this was bad. Very bad. 

_Right. Buggered it is, then._

Holding the orb in front of him like a talisman, the man edged his way over to the prone figure of the woman; he carefully placed the orb back into the open box, then set it on the ground where it continued to radiate like a beacon. He reached down and checked the woman’s pulse, then gently turned her over and cradled her in his arms, his face etched with worry. 

“Faith. Faith...Can you hear me?” 

There was no response at first, then a faint moan. 

The redhead jerked Harry closer and shouted in his face, “What did you assholes do to her?” 

Stunned, he locked eyes with her, her expression a turbulent mix of rage and fear. He shook his head and croaked, “Nothing!......Nothing... We just got here!” 

“Bullshit!” She shook him, as if to emphasize her disagreement; his head snapped back and his teeth clacked together painfully. 

“We didn’t touch her, ye bleedin psychos!” Ron yelled back raggedly. 

That caught Harry’s attention instantly. Ron’s voice sounded so very _off_. 

Craning his head around as far as he was able, he saw Ron on his knees, his hand clasped around the shaft of a bolt protruding from just below his collarbone. Cormac knelt next to him, grim faced, his arm on Ron’s shoulder. Their wands were on the ground in front of them, just out of reach. Oh shit. 

The black woman still covered them both with her weapon. She looked decidedly pissed off. 

A thin, feminine whisper reached Harry’s ears. “Giles?” 

“Faith!” Giles breathed in relief. “What happened? Where is Buffy?” One handed, he slid a first aid kit from his pack and rifled through it, producing a small brown bottle. Giles murmured, “it’s going to sting a bit” before pouring the contents over her abdomen. 

Faith hissed and struggled to sit up, but Giles held her in place. “B’s not here?” She rasped out, distraught. 

He shook his head, his mouth a thin line. “We’ve seen no sign of her...yet.” 

Faith wore a pained grimace. “There were demons,,,in, um, a circle, and….I dunno, some magic dude with….bad headgear. Looked hardcore, so B said to call for backup. I got...torn up, so I gave her my sword.” She groaned, then angled her head up to look up at Giles. “I feel like shit.” 

“A circle, you say?” Giles repeated distantly, his brow scrunched up in concentration. 

For a moment Harry wondered if he was delirious from oxygen deprivation, because he wasn’t entirely certain that he’d actually heard Faith correctly. _Demons? Backup?_ Who in Merlin’s name were these people? Had they…had they actually been hunting that creature? 

Giles nodded toward Harry. “Perhaps these men here know what happened. They could have--”

Faith squinted up at him, interrupting, “Men? What?, Wait, that was real?” 

“Nah, you just imagined smashing me bloody teeth in.” Cormac retorted, disbelieving. Throwing a distrustful glare at Rona, he asked, “Who the bloody hell are you people?” He paused, then gestured toward Faith, “And how is she even _conscious?_ ” he added, a confused, sullen undertone creeping into his voice. Though he sat in stoic silence next to him, Ron was getting progressively paler. “I get you lot aren’t Muggles, but her vitals were…they were damn near nonexistent!” 

Giles’s head snapped up at that, his face shifting in dawning comprehension. His voice rang out then, an unmistakable edge of authority in his tone. “Vi! Let him go…..and Rona, stand down.” 

“What?”

“You heard me.” 

Harry nearly sank to the ground in relief as the pressure was abruptly released from his throat. 

Cormac swiftly focused his attention on Ron’s shoulder; Giles gently eased Faith down onto her back, sliding the pack under her head as a cushion. “I must confess, I haven’t heard that term since….well, since I was a schoolboy.” He eyed Harry speculatively. “You’re from the Ministry of Magic, am I correct?” 

Harry, rubbing a particularly tender spot on his neck where his robes had been bunched roughly against his skin, was striding toward Ron but stopped short at Giles’s words. 

Cormac stiffened; his hand twitched and tightened around his wand in an apparently fleeting, abortive impulse to hex the man. “What makes you think we’re from the Ministry?” he asked coldly. 

Giles caught it too; though he remained crouched next to the woman, his entire frame was tight, corded with tension. Slowly, he rose to his feet, brushing his hands on the sides of his jeans. His eyes flicked back and forth between the three of them, as if measuring their reaction. “When he said Muggle, I realized at last who you were.” Giles explained, “Well, that...and the, uh, matching cloaks were a bit of a clue. My name is Rupert Giles, and these are my associates; Violet, Rona and Faith. We must apologize for our conduct--we received a call from Faith, and..when we arrived we thought you were attacking her. Obviously we were terribly mistaken.” 

Clearly, Cormac wasn’t prepared to let Giles and company off the hook just yet. “That’s all well and good, but that still doesn’t explain what the lady was doing here in the cemetery.” He fairly bristled with indignation.

“Cormac,” Ron cut in, clamping a hand firmly on Cormac’s shoulder and shooting him a look that said _don’t be a prat_. “I’m Ron Weasley. That’s Harry Potter,” he said, nodding in his direction. To Harry’s relief, some of the color had already returned to his face. 

“No, no, it’s a fair point,” Giles conceded. “We are, to put it simply,” he said, appearing to choose his words with care, “professional demon hunters.”

“Demon hunters?” Cormac sounded skeptical. 

“Demons, vampires, creatures who would spread their evil on the--, “He broke off. “Look, I’d be more than happy to discuss this more thoroughly over a pint by the fire, but right now one of our colleagues--a young woman-- is missing, and may be injured. We need to find her. Quickly.”

“This would be Buffy--the one you asked her about?” 

“Now just hold on a bloody minute!” Cormac interrupted. He stared at Harry, incredulous. “You don’t seriously believe him, do you?” 

“Excuse us a moment,” Harry said to Giles tersely, steering Cormac and Ron a few steps away. With a few sharp waves of his wand, the faint buzz of _muffliato_ enveloped the three men. “What are you doing, Cormac?” Harry crossed his arms and fixed him with his best Head Auror glare. 

The slow simmer of Cormac’s temper threatened to erupt into a full boil. “I don’t like this!” he bit out, stepping right up until he was almost pressing his chest against Harry’s. “Those women are _not human_ ,” he emphasized loudly, gesturing towards Rona and Vi. 

“No, but Giles probably is. I could always hex him to find out.” Ron interjected excitedly. At Harry’s appalled expression he quickly muttered, chagrined, “It was just a thought. I mean, come on! No way is he being straight with us.”

“He’s right. For all we know,” Cormac continued, “this Faith woman participated in this ritual or whatever it was, something went wrong--and now her friends have come ‘round to collect her and cover her tracks.”

As much as it galled him to admit it, Harry couldn’t deny Cormac had a point.“You may be right.” he admitted grudgingly. And Cormac was a decent sort. Really, he was. Of all his finer qualities, though, critical thinking was sadly not among them. 

Harry sighed, then said, “But it’s my call, and I say they’re the closest thing we’ve got to having any idea about what happened here. So we play along for now, see if we can learn anything.” As Cormac opened his mouth, Harry pressed on, overriding his protest. “I’m not ready to send for reinforcements just yet.”

 

Cormac deflated a bit and eyed Harry pensively. “Robards will have our heads for this. Hope you know what you’re doing, mate.”

His mouth creased into a smirk. “Never stopped me before.”

“Wait, where’d he go?” Ron asked, puzzled. 

So engrossed were they in their conversation, they hadn’t immediately noticed that Giles and Vi were nowhere to be seen. Rona sat on the ground, crosslegged, with Faith propped against her. They rushed over, surrounding the two women. Rona tilted her head up to look at them, flatly unimpressed. 

“While you boys were over there having your little circle jerk, Giles and Vi went to get a lead on our missing person...or did you forget about that part?” 

“Did you hear what she just said?” Cormac’s obvious display of outrage seemed rather dubious, given his own often inappropriate flippancy. 

Harry’s nerves were beginning to wear thin. “Merlin’s Beard, Cormac. _Let it go._ This is getting us nowhere.” 

Harry simply stared Rona down until finally, she rolled her eyes and huffed out a sigh. “Fine. They’re right over there.” 

As they turned and strode away, Faith, who until that moment had been reclining, body slack and eyes closed as if sleeping, broke out in weak, wheezy chuckling. “Girl, you really gotta work on those people skills.” 

“Yeah, yeah. You’re one to talk.”

* * *

Vi waited anxiously off to one side of the circle, the silvery moonlight highlighting her pale features. Giles didn’t look up or otherwise acknowledge them as they approached. He was pacing the circle, almost manic, eyeing the symbols with undisguised dismay.

Striding up to him, Harry bluntly demanded, “You know what these runes mean, don’t you?”  
Giles attention snapped to him at once. In his eyes was naked fear. It took him a second to compose himself enough to respond. “Yes….yes,” he said, pointing to a specific spot. “These markings represent Eryishon.” 

“I don’t know what that is.” 

“It’s not a _what_ , it’s a _who_. Eryishon is a demon who holds power over time. The circle is an invocation….beseeching him to….throw open the door, as it were.” 

Harry stared at him, aghast. “Are you saying someone opened a doorway in _time?_ ” The echo of a long dead memory sounded in his head. _Terrible things happen to wizards who meddle with time, Harry._ A cold sliver of dread curled through his gut. This was even worse than he’d imagined. 

“Precisely, though….they would have needed a willing blood sacrifice to complete the ritual and activate the portal.” 

Thinking quickly, Harry said, “We found was a body when we got here. It wasn’t human.” 

Ron’s voice carried from where he stood on the opposite edge of the circle. “So that thing we found--that was a demon, yeah?” 

“Was its throat cut?”

Harry shook his head. “Chest wound.”

Giles yanked his glasses off and rubbed his hands over his face. For a moment, he looked absolutely wrecked. “Buffy,” he whispered, anguished, “she couldn’t possibly have anticipated--” The trepidation in his features transformed into a mask of fierce, paternal anger. “Clever _bastard_.” 

“So you believe she went through this..portal?” Merlin, it was difficult to wrap his brain around the notion that someone had opened a hole in time. The Unspeakables would have an absolute field day once they learned of it. 

“Considering the manner in which it was carried out, it may have been their plan all along…” He hesitated, then went still. “She...bloody hell. This must be what she saw...the imagery she described...I can’t believe I didn’t recognize it right away.”

Cormac, who had been avidly watching their exchange, stepped in. “Look, mate. I’m man enough to admit I’m out of my depth here. I’m not quite following ya. Are you saying she had visions? Like a seer?” 

“No, not quite - more like prophetic dreams. Unfortunately, deciphering them with any accuracy has always been a bit of a crap shoot.”

At that, Ron shot a questioning glance at Harry, who just furrowed his brow and gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. 

“How are we going to find her, Giles? Where do we even start?” Vi asked, her distress evident. It was the first she’d spoken since she tried to throttle him. 

“I believe the answer to that is right here in front of us. This circle. I’m hoping the runes give us some indication as to the portal’s focal point, but I’m afraid we don’t have much time.”

“What do you mean?”

Giles’s tone was grave. ”Eryishon is not a being to be trifled with, and certainly not readily given to interfering in the affairs of mankind. Whoever invoked him has set into motion a dangerous chain of events...that could jeopardize the very fabric of our world.” 

Cormac scoffed, “That’s...that’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

“No, Cormac,” Harry swung around on him sharply. “He’s right. Hermione explained it to me once. When you mess about with time, you can change things without even meaning to.” 

Nodding in agreement, Giles added, “the consequences of interfering with the could be catastrophic. Any one of us could just blink out of existence, simply because our ancestors don’t meet when they’re supposed to.”

A painfully long beat passed where Cormac’s face was frozen in appalled fascination. “Think I got the gist of it, thanks,” he replied, his voice barely above a whisper. 

Ron was eyeing the circle of runes, face screwed up in distaste. “Bloody hell, Cormac, you were right. Just looking at this thing makes me want to spew.”

“What you sense are traces of Eryishon’s presence. Lucky for us such incomprehensibly potent evil no longer exists in our dimension,” explained Giles. 

Ron shuddered briefly before striding away. He was pacing around, scanning the cemetery as if searching for something. “Oi, Harry. We’ve got problems.”

“Don’t tell me you’re just catching on to that now.”

“No, mate. What I mean is - how in Merlin’s name are we supposed to secure the scene here?”

“Damn it, you’re right.” With a groan, he muttered, “I hadn’t gotten that far yet.”

“We’ll have to set wards.”

Cormac let out a disbelieving noise. “Around the entire bloody perimeter? Good luck with that.” 

“What’s going on?” Giles asked. 

“Well, unless we figure out how to restrict access to the site, in about five hours this place will be crawling with wixen both curious and morbid, and all our evidence will either be compromised, or it will just disappear.”

“Not to mention the absolute bloody circus we’ll have on our hands if the Prophet gets wind of this.” 

“Or the Wizengamot.”

“Knowing them, they’ll haul us in for an inquiry, claiming we violated the Statute of Secrecy.”

Giles interjected, “That sounds familiar, but I’m not sure what it has to do with us?”

“Bunch of sticks in their arses, they don’t take kindly to interaction with outsiders, particularly Muggles.”

“I see. Look, we don’t expect you to help us - and given our introduction, I can’t honestly say I would blame you if you refused. But let me make something perfectly clear.” His tone hardened. “I intend to find whoever is responsible for this. I will deal with them, and one way or another I will find Buffy and neither you nor your Ministry had better interfere or--”

Harry cut him off. “We’ll help you. Besides,” he said, addressing Ron and Cormac, “they’re not Muggles, remember?”

Giles stuttered to a halt, staring at him for an instant in surprise. He nodded, then said somberly, “Thank you...I have a feeling we’re going to need all the help we can get.” 

“Right, lads. Looks like we’ve got to bring in the cavalry after all.”

With a brisk nod, Cormac said, “I’ll go haul Robards out of bed. He can brief the Minister and have a security team here within the hour.” He then turned on the spot and disapparated.

Vi watched as Cormac vanished, her eyes alight with appreciation. “Nice. Bet that comes in handy.”

Giles turned to her then and said, “I need you and Rona to take Faith home. I’ll be staying here.” On impulse, he caught her arm as she moved to leave. “Call Willow. I hate to disturb her retreat, but she needs to know what’s going on.”

“So,” Looks like we’re in for a long night.” Ron clapped his hands together, rubbing them back and forth in anticipation. “Who’s up for tea and pastry?”

Giles paused as he began to pull a small notebook and pen from the inside pocket of his jacket. “That would be lovely, actually.”

“You don’t mind spending the night in a graveyard?”

For a second Giles stared at him, a peculiar expression on his face, before his mouth curved into a wry smile. “It’s no trouble at all,” he said congenially. “Gets me out and away from the raging horde.” 

“Demons?” Ron asked, curious. 

“Teenagers.”


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N--Nothing belongs to me. Some warnings for language, and somewhat adult themes.

**Chapter Four**

**October 1945**

“Get a stasis charm on that hand right away,” Tom commanded briskly as he materialized in his flat above Borgin and Burkes, the lamps flaring into brilliant, blazing life in perfect sync his arrival.

Without waiting to see if Malfoy had even fully corporealized, he swiftly maneuvered the unconscious woman through the slightly cramped, book laden sitting room and into the more dimly lit sanctuary of his bedroom. 

He carefully laid Buffy on his narrow bed. A sense of urgency thrummed through him as he once again pressed the still sticky fingers of one hand to her neck, expecting to feel her thin, thready pulse, his wand poised in the other, prepared to cast healing charms on her again. Even with the potion and magic he administered, her condition was precarious enough that he couldn't be entirely certain of her survival. 

To his genuine astonishment, her heartbeat was...steadier, perhaps still a bit weak, but stable enough that for a full second he simply stood, marvelling at the beat of it beneath his fingers. 

_How was this possible?_

Only scant minutes ago he’d felt for himself the erratic hammer of her faltering heartbeat as she bled out, yet now...

Such an instantaneous recovery was…well, it was unheard of. It was significant, though he could not yet deduce how, as there was no precedent or parameters of explanation from which to form a conclusion. It wasn't logical. His mind whirred as he stared at her. It was utterly fascinating. She was fascinating. 

There was an undeniable presence to her, her power a tangible, vibrant thing, though distinctly unlike the familiar magical aura of a wizard or witch. 

_And there had also been that moment, in the cemetery, when he’d cast at her…_

He drew his hand away. Whatever answers were to be discerned, he would be unable to devote the full weight of his considerable attention to the issue until after his business with Malfoy was completed. Satisfied she was no longer in immediate danger, he simply covered her with a soft blanket, cast a warming charm over her, then stepped out and crossed the living room to the corner of the flat that served as its kitchen. 

Abraxas stood at the small, square dining table, his wand tracing a complicated set of patterns in the air as he cast the charm on the severed hand of the sorcerer. After a moment, a faintly glowing sphere encased it. He slouched a bit, then, in relief. “Right, then. That should do it.” 

“Excellent.”

With a nod toward the bedroom, Abraxas asked, “how’s Miss...Summers, isn’t it?”

“Out of danger, it would seem.”

“That’s -” he gaped, face scrunching in bewilderment. 

Tom silenced him with a look. “Quite.” 

Abraxas was, to his benefit, quick on the uptake. Despite his obvious, avid curiosity, he wisely did not pursue any further questions regarding Buffy’s physical state. He turned his attention instead to the glove, which now lay innocuously palm up on the table top. The thing literally _oozed_ with dark magic, and there was something-

Just then, Tom swept the glove up into his hand to examine it more closely. “Now, this is quite a fascinating little souvenir we have acquired, is it not?” 

Abraxas eyed the glove with a frown, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Yes, it is.”

Tom turned it over, closely scrutinizing it. “You look troubled, Malfoy. You’re not going delicate on me over a simple dark artifact, are you?” 

“Course not,” he scoffed, then, the barest hint of affront in his voice. “No, it’s...see these markings here?” he said, pointing to a set of tiny glyphs hammered into one of the metal scales near the cuff. “I know that I’ve seen them before. I just...I can’t place it just now.”

Tom regarded him with a shrewd, speculative expression. “Well. It would certainly serve your interests to try to remember, then, wouldn’t it?”

A moment of awkward silence ensued, then Abraxas squared his shoulders and answered, “I’ll do my best.”

“Of course you will,” Tom replied, waving him off in a clear dismissal, “I’ll leave the wards keyed to you for the remainder of the night.” He fixed Abraxas with a pointed look. “I'm sure you'll make good use of your time then.” 

Malfoy wordlessly nodded his head in assent, but his eyes were hard. With a faint crack, he disapparated. 

Returning to his room, Tom shut the door, then sat on the edge of his bed and quietly regarded Buffy for a moment before running his index finger across the smooth plane of her cheek, down to her jaw. She didn’t stir, her breathing deep, even and untroubled. It had been too dark outside for him to see the color of her eyes, but he would see them soon enough. 

Here, though, in the soft glowing lamplight he could see she really was exceptionally lovely, with long, honey gold hair, delicate features, and her skin - warm, velvet soft, and if not for the utterly horrific lacerations marring her back and shoulder, flawless as well. 

If he could have intervened sooner, perhaps she might have been spared such grievous injuries. As it was, he barely managed to prevent her dying. That had been that filthy sorcerer’s goal though, hadn’t it? To quite literally shred her? And how did she know him? From the snippets he had overheard of their conversation, they were not strangers to each other. He briefly wondered at the nature of their enmity, and what she could have done to him, apart from actual emasculation, to have provoked a hatred virulent enough for him to orchestrate an elaborate plot involving a magical portal and Hell beasts - hardly the neatest or most expedient means available. 

Of course, the sorcerer was now a loose end that would have to be dealt with, especially if he attempted to finish the act of revenge he’d so ineptly begun. In addition to being obviously insane, he’d likely be even more vicious and dangerously unpredictable now that she’d disfigured him. Not that he was concerned. He didn’t doubt for a moment he could take him - it wouldn’t even be a challenge, really. 

Tom sighed. He should have just killed the bastard when he had the opportunity. 

_So who are you, then?_

Without consciously realizing it at first, he reached out again, brushing a few errant strands of hair away from her face and indulging in the rare tactile sensation of skin touching skin. He closed his eyes and reached out with his magic, seeking out the edges of her power. 

There. 

Allowing his magic to flow out more freely, as if unslackening a rope, he skimmed the fabric of her aura, then held his awareness in absolute stillness, letting it wash over him, gathering the flavor of it as if catching a precious, elusive fragrance wafting on a summer breeze. It was… it was...

His eyes snapped open. 

Her power. It was so... _different_ , unlike anything he’d ever encountered. 

It was… preternatural, ancient. 

And there was a deep, broad vein of darkness winding through it, threaded into her essence like the roots of a tree. 

A keen, electric energy began to thrum through him as he studied her. He’d no idea who or what she was--in fact, his only certainty at the moment was that she was neither a witch nor a Muggle. No indication of where she’d come from, nothing, only that she was alone here, with no allies, save for him. A deep swell of satisfaction rose within him at that. She would need him, need his help. 

And with that thought also came the unexpected realization that there was something incredibly enticing about her laying here, in his bed, in total, absolute vulnerability. He found his pulse quickening, unfamiliar and oddly exciting impulses flooding his system, activating a darker, primal portion of his brain, akin to the way the senses of a predator fully engaged, became hyper alert and aware as they locked onto their prey. Not that she would be prey in any traditional sense, of course--well, not yet, anyway. There were still too many questions he needed answered. Who was she? Was anyone looking for her? 

Would she be useful? 

It was a bit if a shock to realize that a small part of him hoped she would prove so. 

In any case, it was time to work. 

He aimed his wand, vanishing her bloodied shirt that was shredded beyond repair. It was quickly followed by her pants and shoes. 

She wasn’t wearing a brassiere, only a lacy, nearly transparent pale blue camisole with matching knickers. 

One side of the camisole was completely ripped apart, and a large irregular swathe all down the front, including her underwear was stained dark and stiffening with her blood. 

A quick, wordless _tergeo_ removed all traces of blood from her flesh and undergarments. 

With calm, clinical detachment he surveyed the injuries marring her chest and back, observing immediately that the deep, messy lacerations--that mere minutes ago were fresh and bleeding --were no longer raw and open--the torn flesh was already knitting itself together. Incredible. 

There was simply no way to account for such astounding, inexplicably rapid healing. Clearly, it indicated the possession of some agency-- or perhaps some sort of physiological process that operated beyond the scope of any magic he’d ever encountered. 

As well as her healing was underway, though, it did appear that several torn, stringy fragments of the camisole were sticking into the wounds, and would have to be removed. 

He moved to flick his wand, then stopped short. 

If she awoke to find her familiar, intimate apparel gone, she might feel…uncomfortable. 

_Vulnerable._

She might even wonder if he had taken liberties with her person. 

And it wasn’t that he cared, though, because really, he didn’t, but he was certainly not prepared to entertain the sort of screeching, hysterical indignation that might accompany a perceived assault on feminine dignity. 

Emotions were, for the most part, utterly foreign to him, except for possibly the more basic primal feelings such as pleasure, fear and anger. Those he understood - had mastered from his earliest memories of Wool’s - and more importantly, they served a purpose. It was frivolous bullshit like caring and compassion he had absolutely no use for. They were the sort of pointless, dramatic emotional displays he found bloody irritating, and to be avoided at all costs...and a fairly explicit invitation to be on the business end of at least two of the Unforgivables.

What he was loathe to admit, even to himself, was that genuine emotion - of being moved to tears by a beautiful piece of music, or the aching grief of loss - was like a private language he could neither truly understand nor speak, and nothing grated, nothing made him burn like _failure._

Nevertheless, if there was one thing he had learned over the years, especially at Hogwarts, it was that he was an excellent mimic. His simulated awareness and attentiveness to details, his superficial anticipation and consideration of the needs and wants and precious bloody _feelings_ of others tended to pay off...rather handsomely. 

He raised his wand, tracing a small, complex pattern in the air, and her camisole and underwear disappeared from her body, only to materialize in the air before him. A few short waves, a murmured incantation, and the delicate garments were perfect and whole once again. Satisfied, he glanced down, and as he took in her nude form, all higher thought abruptly ground to a halt. 

Right. Beauty. He was not oblivious to beauty, and she was- 

Her breasts were small and round and _absolutely bloody perfect_ , the plane of her bare abdomen lean, well muscled, flaring out to the gentle curve of her hips. Overall she carried the lithe, well contoured frame of a ballet dancer. 

His face went red and he grimaced in consternation as he felt a swift rush of warmth in his abdomen, along with the reflexive tightening of his groin. The distraction was sufficient enough for him to lose track of the charm he’d cast; her undergarments dropped unceremoniously into a heap on the floor at his feet. 

_So much for ruling his baser instincts._

_Oh, bloody hell._ This was ridiculous. He would not allow himself to become a slave to his anatomy. 

Unlike his Knights, he had - up until a few moments ago - been perfectly content to keep it in his pants. 

Not that he didn’t have needs. 

He was Dark, not bloody _insane._

But when one pursued an agenda that essentially entailed securing dominion over the whole of Wizarding Britain, procuring something as mundane as a girlfriend was hardly on one’s list of priorities. One simply governed oneself accordingly. Her skin, though. It looked so soft, and - 

No. 

Tom clenched his free hand into a fist, the sharp pain of his nails digging into his palm helping him refocus and bring his errant body under control. Slashing his wand decisively through the air, her undergarments instantly reappeared on her body, then bandages appeared, covering up the healing cuts. Another wave of his wand, and she was wrapped in soft, full length robes. 

Now...It was time to get some answers. 

He pointed his wand at her. _Rennervate._

There was a slow fluttering of her eyelashes; her eyes cracked open. 

It was all he needed. 

Quickly, he climbed onto the bed, on top of her, ignoring the lush warmth of her body beneath his as he grasped the sides of her head and locked his eyes to hers. 

_Legilimens._

 

Tom suddenly found himself in a darkened cavern, perched at the edge a rocky ledge. The air was oppressively hot and reeked vaguely of sulphur and of...something unidentifiable and ,i>foul. Far below him, a seething multitude of vicious looking fanged creatures surged and undulated like a single entity, their growling and snarling a monstrous, dissonant roar. 

There was no discernable exit. 

Tom experienced a mounting wave of concern--this was not at all what usually happened when he cast Legilimens. Where the bloody fuck was he?

He sensed a presence behind him, and spun around, instinctively brandishing his wand.

"Looking for anything in particular? Or just checking out the scenery?"

Buffy stood with her arms crossed, gazing coolly at him. Her posture was deceptively casual, relaxed even, but she exuded that tantalizing, unmistakable aura of power. For the moment, he allowed his curiosity about the situation to overrule the coil of unease working its way up through him and lowered his wand. 

"What is this place?" He kept his tone even, his face impassive. 

"This," she said as she gestured around, "is the Hellmouth."

His mouth creased into a frown as he absorbed that, and his tension must have been obvious to her, because she smirked at him and said, “Relax. Technically, this place doesn’t exist anymore, but as the site of my most recent major throwdown, I’m sure there’s some psycho-babbly explanation for why I’m here.” She paused, then pinned him with a glare. “Doesn’t explain why you’re here, though.....so. What’s your deal?”

He simply stared at her, nonplussed, as he swiftly processed the information she’d just given him....as well as her bizarre manner of speaking. 

So this place was part of her memory, then. While it was possible for an occlumens--a powerful one--to produce images to serve as a protective shield against someone like him, his presence here, in such an all encompassing, realistic mindscape, was unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

It was….unnerving, yet oddly exhilarating. 

“There is no _deal,_ ” he replied, striding over until he was right in front of her, encroaching in her personal space once again. “I want to know who you are,” he stated, his tone direct, firm. His eyes flicked over her face, openly appraising her. 

Her eyes were a bright, stormy blue. 

For the tiniest fraction of a second she hesitated, her brow creasing almost imperceptibly, though she masked it quickly, replying, “How nice. Generally speaking, though, I’m not the kind of girl who mind melds on a first date.” Her face scrunched up in thought. “Not that this remotely qualifies…as, you know,” she trailed off, “…a date.” There was a brief pause as she huffed, then shook her head slightly, as if clearing her thoughts. “Who ,i>are you?” 

_Mind meld. How…apropos._ “As I told you in the cemetery, Miss Summers, my name is Tom,” he bowed his head slightly, “and I am well pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“So where am I, really?” 

“My flat near Diagon Alley…in London.”

“ _London?_ ” She echoed, incredulous. “How did--” Her eyes swiveled to his wand. “You’re a magic user.” It wasn’t a question. 

“I am a wizard, yes.” He replied, conversationally before adopting his best solicitous tone. “It really was quite fortunate I happened to be close by when you…..arrived.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to that,” she said, a bit dismissively. “So, _Tom,_ is the concept of personal boundaries completely foreign to wizards?” 

Oh. So that was it. One corner of his mouth quirked up. Now was probably not the best time to mention that he’d just seen her naked. 

“Do forgive my intrusiveness.” He pasted on what he hoped was an appropriately contrite expression on his face. “Clearly, I allowed my curiosity about you to override all measure of propriety.” 

“Yes, you clearly did.” 

“But I was afraid,” he pressed on, imbuing his tone with the force of his sincerity, “I was afraid you might die before I learned anything about you.” What the hell was her problem? He’d just saved her life! Not exactly brimming with gratitude, was she?

Then she scoffed. 

The bint actually bloody scoffed. At. Him. 

“Is that the best you can do?” She said, her tone laced with condescension, and she had the audacity to cock her head to one side and actually look at him as though he was some sort of _deficient._ “Seriously, I’ve heard better lines from _trolls_. And believe me, I’ve met a few.”

A sharp flare of irritation began to course through him.

He’d fucking killed people for less. 

She was absolutely bloody ridiculous. Beautiful, yes. But the situation was very quickly spiraling out of his control, and that was completely _unacceptable_. 

He was beginning at last to understand why the sorcerer wanted her dead. Perhaps he would discuss it in greater depth with him when he found him. Before torturing and killing him, of course. 

“For Merlin’s sake, woman!” He snapped, “You nearly bled to death just now, and for the _last bloody time_ , I was simply trying to learn who you are, since you are not presently capable of communicating with me!” Damn. He hadn’t intended to raise his voice, but it was getting increasingly difficult to maintain his calm facade. 

“That does not give you the right to just stroll through my head because you happen to be curious!” 

Tom took a deep breath to settle his rising agitation. It would, in all likelihood, be tactically inadvisable to simply pick her up and hurl her over the ledge. Maybe. But it would be deeply satisfying, especially if she screamed on the way down. 

“It’s hardly what I would call a stroll.” He muttered. 

Her jaw dropped in angry disbelief. “I didn’t ask you to pick me up like some lost puppy and take me home!” She marched right up to him. “Get out.” 

“No.”

“No?” 

“You’re not in any condition to make demands,” he drawled. Her eyes hardened dangerously at that, her body language signaling that she was preparing to fight but he pressed on, emphasizing, “You nearly died, and in case you’ve forgotten, that lunatic who nearly killed you is still at large. Whether you like it or not, at this particular moment you need my help!” 

Seconds went by where she held herself absolutely rigid as a statue, fists clenched, practically incandescent with anger. If looks could kill, he thought, he would be nothing but a withered corpse laid out on the floor. 

“Fine. You saved my life. Thank you. This?” she bit out, pointing around the cavern, “still not okay.” 

An enigmatic smile flitted across his face, then was gone. “Point taken.” He straightened, then stepped back from her a short distance. “I’ll go now… I...I crossed a line, I see that now. I am sorry,” he said, his tone somber. “As soon as you wake, I will transport you where ever you need to go.” 

“That won’t be necessary.”

“I’m not sure I understand--”

She broke in, “Look...it’s nothing personal, I just...don’t do helpless very well.” 

The irate edge in her voice had softened, almost imperceptibly. He was getting close, he knew it. “So I gather,” he answered wryly.

“I need to go--” Her face was a study in conflict. 

“I can find him for you, you know.” 

At that, her eyes snapped to his. “Ethan.”

“You know him.”

“We go back… and not in a good way.” 

“He’ll be searching for you. He’ll try to kill you again.”

She smirked. “The operative word being try.”

“Truce?” He asked quietly, extending his hand. 

When she raised her eyes to look up at him, her expression was stern. “I’ll deal with Ethan.” 

“I’ve no doubt you will. The offer still stands.”

“Okay…” She seemed to wage some brief inner struggle, then abruptly she blew out a long breath, her posture relaxing slightly. “Truce.” 

Buffy reached for his hand. 

The instant their palms made contact, everything exploded. 

A deluge of images crashed over him, bringing him to his knees. 

_He could see her here, in the Hellmouth, surrounded on all sides by the fanged creatures he’d seen from atop the ledge. Along with her were a number of young women, all of them engaged in frenzied, vicious combat with the creatures. In her hands Buffy wielded a strange, bladed weapon and with a single, powerful sweep of it the line of creatures before her exploded into dust. Seconds later she suddenly lurched forward, her expression a mix of pain and shock as she looked down to see a blade protruding from her abdomen---_

_There was a sensation of spinning, shifting, and now Buffy stood beneath a thin, precariously swaying metal tower, facing off against a bloodied, battered woman whose entire being reeked of rage and madness. “You’re just a mortal,” the woman shrieked, “you couldn’t understand my pain.”_

_Buffy, grim faced and implacable, raised the enormous hammer she held and retorted, “Then I’ll just have to settle for causing it,” as she let loose with a blow that hurled the woman backward._

_More shifting, and she was in the center of a room, her eyes eerily aglow, fighting yet a different monster. When she spoke, her voice was deeper, otherworldly, layered with a multitude of other voices,“You could never hope to grasp the source of our power,” she intoned, thrusting her fist deep into the creature’s torso. She jerked her arm back. In her hand was a small, glowing device. “But yours is right here.”_

_The rapid-fire pace of the images increased, became a blur of dizzying, incomprehensible flashes, until…_

_“Why can’t you people just leave me alone?” She was in a school library, clearly younger than she was now._

_A man with glasses glared at her disapprovingly as he descended a spiral staircase. “Because you are the Slayer. Into each generation a Slayer is born. One girl in all the world, a Chosen One, one born with--”_

_Buffy cut him off. “With the strength and skill to hunt the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil blah blah blah...I’ve heard it, okay?”_

 

Crackling energy swelled and rippled over Buffy. It was intense, buzzing, searing through every nerve ending like being plugged into a light socket. Tom’s magic abruptly surged around him, sparking and shimmering in waves, like heat from a flame. It swirled out, surrounding them both. 

She stared at him in shocked silence as his magic fully enveloped her. The only other person she’d ever seen with this incredible amount of power had been Willow. 

He was also quite possibly, one of the most beautiful men she had ever laid eyes on. She could see his aura, dark and earthy as the grave and God, so _alluring_. It sang out to her, beckoning to her own darkness. 

_But there was something very wrong with it, and with him._

Instead of incandescent, unbroken cords that hummed and circled around him in infinite, perfect winding loops, fragmented strands of energy snapped and fluttered around his being like flames. 

They stood, hands tightly clasped, unable to move. 

When he was finally able to speak again, his voice was a hoarse croak. "Who are you?"

"I'm the Slayer." 

With a nearly inhuman surge of strength he managed to yank his hand away from her. 

Tom jolted back to reality, looked down at Buffy. 

She was staring up at him, her brow furrowed in confusion, eyes glassy and unfocused. Before he could open his mouth, she abruptly whispered, "What have you done to your soul?"

He went rigid. Before he could frame a response, her eyes rolled back and she went completely limp. 

Tom’s head was pounding; he felt like he’d just been dragged several kilometers by the Hogwarts Express. As he tried to climb off of the bed and stand up he overbalanced and careened into his night table, knocking it over, the lamp and a number of potion bottles shattering on the floor with a loud clatter. Fucking Hell. 

A sound in the other room alerted him that Malfoy had returned. He took a few moments to compose himself, then opened his door. “Malfoy.” It came out as little more than a whisper. 

“Tom?” Malfoy exclaimed, surging up from his seat. His appearance must have reflected how he felt, for Malfoy’s eyes grew wide in concern. “Tom! Are you alright?” 

Tom waved him off, though after attempting to stand upright and nearly falling over he was possibly beginning to regret his stoicism. “I’ll be fine.” Shuffling awkwardly over to the couch he collapsed onto it with a tired sigh. “Tell me, Abraxas, what do you know of a being called the Slayer?”


	5. Chapter Five

A/N- I own nothing.

**Chapter Five**

**October 1945**

It was painful, Ethan found, being spat out of the sky and slammed into hard cobblestone like some insane human meteor. Ridiculously, stupidly painful. But it still couldn’t quite outstrip the blistering agony lancing through his arm.

Unable to halt his momentum, he tumbled helplessly over and over, each smack against the cobbles sharp and bone jarring, until he crashed with an impressively loud _thwump_ against what he dimly registered were large wooden barrels, their contents audibly sloshing from the impact. 

For a long drawn out stretch all he could do was lay there on his side, his entire body a seething, twitching mass of raw nerves, shivering and disoriented as the instinctive pulse of self preservation that had propelled his escape bled away, his brain a spinning, spiraling jumble of rage mixed with the almost paralyzing disbelief that _he’d lost, she fucking got away oh holy fuck it hurts it hurts so fucking bad--_

Between the sensation that he’d just been keelhauled and the heavy rancid odor of stale beer and rotting garbage permeating his nostrils, he fought and failed to overcome the sudden, overpowering urge to retch, his wounded arm clenched tight against his body as he heaved. 

The only other thing he could possibly discern about his surroundings with any certainty was that it was dark. Or maybe his eyes had simply decided to throw in the towel and stop working as well. That would be just his bloody luck, now wouldn’t it? 

He had no idea where he was, apart the horrific smell _now with added vomit!_ indicating he’d probably landed in some filthy back alley. It seemed a fitting end to a spectacular clusterfuck of an evening. 

His robes were were sticky, wet, clinging to his torso and pungent with a heavy metallic tang that threatened to send his gorge rising again. He could still feel the blood sluggishly leaking from his ruined wrist despite keeping his hand clamped around it like a vise. He was still conscious enough to grasp that if he didn’t get medical attention very, very soon he would be in some seriously deep shit. 

Strolling out under his own power, however, was completely out of the question at the moment, given the full body makeout session with the pavement he’d just experienced. Bloody hell, but right now his legs were still completely uncoordinated and useless, and road rash didn’t even begin to cover the state of the rest of his body, which had already been pushed to near extremity thanks to the simply fabulous prison diet he’d spent the last few years on. 

At this point he wasn’t even sure he could summon the wherewithal to cry out for help, let alone sit up. 

He was, putting it mildly, royally fucked. 

There was a sharp loud creak of a door, then a voice pierced the veil of pain and nausea. 

“--And I’m tellin yeh I heard somethin--Oy!--”

The quick scrape of heavy boots on stone came closer, followed by a very large but surprisingly gentle pair of hands gripping him and rolling him over onto his back. 

In the nearly pitch black alleyway it was impossible to see anything clearly beyond the huge, improbably shaggy silhouette of the person who’d found him. A huge, shaggy person who smelled vaguely of _dog_. He squinted unsteadily up at the figure. _Oh, look. It’s a Wookiee. Fancy that._

“Easy, mate, we’ll get yeh sorted out.” 

He lay there, limp with relief that odds of him bleeding to death in this shitty, dirty place had been significantly reduced. 

Craning his head back, the man called out, “Don’t just stand there gawping! He’s hurt bad! Go fetch Aberforth!” 

Pulling a large, slightly tattered handkerchief from some deep recess of his furry looking coat, he carefully blotted some of the vomit and blood from Ethan’s face, all the while murmuring what he supposed was comforting nonsense. Ethan began to shiver again. The tenuous thread of his thoughts was slowly unspooling, growing fuzzy and indistinct and damn he must have lost a lot of blood and _Hey, Chewbacca, where’s the fucking ambulance?_

The man checking him over uttered an oath, and Ethan nearly leapt out of his skin from the swift dart of searing pain as something was wrapped tightly around his wrist. There were other faces hovering over him now, but his vision was beginning to gray out around the edges. 

He was beginning to drift a bit, waiting to hear the familiar sound of a wailing siren that would signal his salvation, not really following along with what the voices were saying until a single word leapt out to him and captured his attention like a gigantic, flashing neon billboard: 

_Mungo’s._

_Wait...wait._

_I know what that is. It’s--_

_St. Mungo’s._

_It’s a hospital._

_Yeah. Hospital. Good. Hospital. Yes._

_Wait! No._

_St, Mungo’s--_

_It’s the--_

_It’s the bloody Wizard hospital!_

Ethan groaned. He was still in the bloody Wizarding world. Oh, shit. SHIT. 

St. Mungo’s meant there might be..police...wait, what did they call them? Aries? No. Errors? Fuck, that’s not it. 

Aurors! 

_And if they find--_

A spasm of pure, unadulterated panic shot through the haze to galvanize him. _Got to get out of here got to get away I’ve got to got to go got to get rid of--_

He began to thrash, arm and legs jerking violently as the large man tried to hold onto him. It was no use; his meager physical resources were simply too depleted, too weakened for him to even sit up, let alone escape. 

With the last burst of his failing strength, though, he managed to fumble his good hand up to his chest and yank the amulet from around his neck. 

The kindly young wizard leaning over and desperately trying to calm the injured, writhing man never noticed a small piece of jewelry being dropped into one of the pockets of his voluminous wooly coat as he frantically shouted for his companions to _hurry!_

* * *

_“Tell me, Abraxas, what do you know of a being called the Slayer?”_

“The Slayer?” Abraxas repeated, swiveling slightly toward the door to Tom’s bedroom, his expression vacillating between surprise and disbelief before veering into something that Tom registered as almost anxious. “Are you certain?” he asked, a perceptible undertone of doubt in his voice. 

Tom’s mouth opened, then snapped shut. Whatever he had expected Malfoy to say, that hadn’t been it. “Explain.” 

“Look, I don’t know a hell of a lot,” Abraxas replied quickly. “Only that it’s always a girl. A _young_ girl,” he emphasized, then paused as if considering, “Well, what I mean is...she’s...she’s,” he inclined his head in the general direction of Tom’s room, “she’s hardly an adolescent, now is she?” 

If he wasn’t so absolutely exhausted, with the makings of a truly astounding headache beginning to pound, hammer like, behind his eyes, he might have cursed Malfoy for forcing him to ask the question in the first place.“Your _point_ , Malfoy?”

“My point, Tom, is...these girls..apparently they tend to not live very long after they’re chosen.” 

“So you are suggesting she is not who she says.”

“I’m merely recommending that we be cautious, Tom. I mean, she just dropped out of a hole in the sky. _Literally._ ” 

“Your concern is touching, really. But besides--that is...rather specific information, isn’t it? How did you come by it, given there has never been a single mention or reference to the Slayer in all our years at Hogwarts?” 

“Now that,” Abraxas paused, looking speculative, “I admit I wondered about myself, especially after seeing this sixth year Hufflepuff last Spring for a bit--not particularly memorable, mind you--”

Tom would have rolled his eyes, but that would have _hurt_ , and he swore that if Malfoy had the audacity to launch into some salacious anecdote that involved slipping some tart “a taste of the old pureblood beef,” he would see him _screaming._

“None of them are ever particularly memorable for you, are they?--” 

“--but she had these absolutely spectacular tits, like really -” he gestured with his hands, and Tom could feel simmering heat building like a wave behind his eyes and if Abraxas did not _shut up right now_ he would bloody incinerate him, consequences be damned. 

“For fucks sake, Malfoy!” he roared, interrupting him, “Could you try, _for a single fucking moment,_ to think with something other than your cock?” 

Abraxas froze in his tracks, his mouth clapping shut. Tom’s glare held all the icy promise of pain, of agonizing death and he knew he’d nearly gone fatally off topic. 

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he ducked his head, contrite, then added hastily, “There was one time she mentioned her plans for after graduation, about how she was supposed to follow her family tradition and become, oh what was it - a Watcher. Apparently they’re the ones who train the girls who become the Slayer.” 

“Go on.”

“That was all, truly,” he assured him, “She threw around words like honor and sacred duty and she made me swear to keep it a secret--thought she was actually going to make me take an Unbreakable for a minute there, but I must confess at the time I wasn’t entirely focused on the...conversation.”

Tom’s head was throbbing now; he briefly wondered if he had a pain potion that he could summon from his medicine cabinet. He also couldn’t help the nebulous but persistent sense that he was missing something. He grit his teeth. “Owl her,” he ordered, decisively. “Tomorrow. Arrange a meeting. I need to know who else might be searching for Miss Summers--besides the one handed prat we met earlier.”

“That might take some cajoling,” Abraxas hedged, his embarrassment evident, “things didn’t end very well between us.”

“Then you’ll just have to call upon your prodigious aristocratic charm, now won’t you?” he sneered, fixing Abraxas with a look that brooked no dissent. “I don’t bloody care if you have to propose marriage to her, Malfoy. Make it happen.”

“I’ll see to it first thing.”

“Right then.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “Goodnight, Malfoy.”

* * *

Someone was poking him. 

And they were speaking to him too, it seemed, though it was all hazy and jumbled. 

All Ethan wanted to do was drift back into the comforting void, to sleep off what surely must have been a fantastic bender. “Sod off,” he grumbled, nestling back down into the downy, cocooning warmth. 

Apparently his brain had other plans. 

As he climbed back toward consciousness, pain once again coursed through him, only now it was a dull, bone deep throbbing ache. 

“He’s coming ‘round.”

“Have that pain draught ready.”

Cracking open eyes gummy with fatigue, Ethan saw that he was in a hospital bed, though the room itself was unlike any hospital he’d ever been in. It was oddly quiet, and there was a conspicuous absence of any sort of electronic monitoring equipment, such as one would find in a regular medical facility. 

The room was private, sparingly appointed and improbably spacious; bright golden beams of sunlight cascaded through a magnificent arched, leaded glass casement window, like something out of a cathedral, casting a multitude of vibrant prismed patterns onto the polished dark tiled floor. 

He could have appreciated the pure aesthetic grace of it if he hadn't felt like absolute shit. 

Ethan blearily eyed those attending to him, trying to assess his situation. There was a short, slightly plump nurse in long, flowing dove gray robes, her gray streaked hair pulled back severely from her round face, and a positively ancient looking man with a long, snowy white beard and quite possibly the most ridiculously bushy eyebrows he’d ever seen wearing a full length, eye wateringly lime green and fuchsia striped satin... _nightgown?_ Bloody hell, it was the Mayor from Yellow Submarine come to life. 

His eyes swept down to his own body then, his left arm snugly encased in crisp, neat white bandages from the top of his bicep all the way to his wrist….that now ended abruptly, unnaturally, in a flat stump. 

And he remembered. 

His hand was gone. 

_Oh, God._

He lurched upright in his bed, his pulse rate zooming like a race car. Adrenaline pumped through him as he hyperventilated, gasping audibly, and his mind utterly unhitched itself, face contorting into a wild rictus of mania as a litany of incoherent rage ricocheted like a bullet through his brain. _Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh fuck that bitch that fucking bitch took my hand my fucking hand my hand God I will kill that bitch kill her KILL HER I..._

Very slowly it registered that the nurse was staring at him, her genial expression frozen, caution tightening her posture like a deer in headlights. The old man held his wand loose at his side, the veneer of harmless affability gone as he watched Ethan with dark, beady hawk like eyes. 

The distant, primitive part of his brain still capable of recognizing danger was attempting to override the backwash of babbling, insane vitriol. It shouted at him to stop, to calm himself down and pull himself together before he fucked things up for himself more than he already had. He was in agony, though, God, he was shaking as if he had fucking palsy and thinking coherently was next to impossible. 

“I..I...I’m..I’m--” he stammered feebly, struggling against the sweaty, churning nausea that was nearly overwhelming. His hand was gone. It was real. The tears that welled up and ran down his face were completely genuine. 

“Easy, son,” the old man said with a calm authority. 

“Here, drink this.” The nurse cut in, sweeping over to his side and raising a tiny glass vial with a strange colored liquid to his lips. Against his better judgement he downed it in a gulp, then stared at her in wonder as every dull pinch and sharp pain in his body miraculously, instantaneously vanished as if it had never existed.

It was _amazing_ , like demerol times ten without the woozy mental fog. He closed his eyes and sank back into the fluffy mound of pillows as his pulse rate slowly ratcheted back down out of the red zone. Better. Oh God yes. So much better. 

Yellow Submarine Man strode to his bedside, remarkably spry despite his advanced years. 

“Oswald Fortescue, Department of Magical Law Enforcement at your service,” the old man introduced himself, speaking with a heavy brogue. “What’s yer name, son?”

“Ethan. Ethan...Bainbridge.” 

Fortescue eyed him meaningfully. “Well, Ethan, yeh were in quite a sorry state when yeh were brought in, son,” he intoned. “Traces of dark magic all over yeh. We need yeh to tell us what happened, if yeh can?” 

And just like that, the nearly euphoric afterglow of the medication blinked out. 

Mutely, Ethan stared at the pair, blood draining from his face as the true magnitude of his predicament sank in.

His eyes fell once again to where his hand had been-- _he didn’t want to look he didn’t want to see because that made it real oh God his hand was really fucking GONE--_ and a wild desperation, swift and solid and irrevocable as a tsunami slammed into him, leaving him shivering in sick, abject fear. 

Outwardly, Ethan simply appeared fully immersed in the distressed paralysis of trauma, horror etched on his features as he sat, frozen. Everything around him fell away as his brain coalesced into a single, hard pinpoint of awful, inescapable truth. 

He had failed to eliminate Buffy. 

God, he was...he was a fucking dead man. 

The one key component of his business arrangement, of his freedom, and the entire fucking operation had gone completely tits up. And why? Because he just couldn’t resist playing with his fucking food, now could he? 

It should have worked. 

It would have. Well, there was the unanticipated interference from that wizard wanker samaritan. Honestly, how could he have possibly anticipated that?

He’d done his homework, factored in logistics, response times, the whole fucking nine yards of it--and it started out swimmingly. Buffy had played the role of beautiful, doomed heroine to perfection. But instead of simply ripping her throat out when he had the chance he’d stood there, grinning like the bloody Cheshire Cat, wanting to draw the moment out and savor it like a fine cabernet-- done in, once again, by his ridiculous compulsion to stay and gloat. 

The old man and the nurse were blathering on in the background; he tuned them out completely as he analyzed his dilemma. 

If he was honest with himself, and he had to be now--he couldn’t simply retreat and nurse the injuries to his dignity like he had in the past--he had to admit he had profoundly underestimated the depth of his desire to hurt her, to make her bleed and suffer in kind for every single bloody hour he’d spent locked inside that horrid little cell, tucked away in the desert where no one could hear him scream, where soldiers had watched him from behind their glass walls and their two way mirrors _watched him all the fucking time_ like he was a bloody lab rat. 

And the worst part was that for the entire duration of his incarceration he’d been stuck in solitary-- alone, forgotten, completely isolated from even the tiniest fragment of human interaction, his very identity slowly curling up and peeling away like layers of old paint on the side of a sun beaten barn. 

Then one day, out of the blue they had arrived with the promise of freedom - impossibly sweet, tantalizing and ripe like low hanging fruit. By that point the price no longer mattered. He signed on the dotted line without an ounce of hesitation. 

If he returned home now, empty handed, they would be waiting for him, all expensive, well tailored suits, bland empty smiles and dead eyes. 

Waiting to collect. 

And oh, God. He’d lost the bloody glove, too. 

Scratch that. He wasn’t just dead-- 

He was damned. 

Unless…

If he found Buffy, if he finished the job, then everything would be fine. The end result was all that mattered. 

It was a long shot. He had no idea where to even start, and he would have to get out of here unscathed first, but he would find that bloody bitch and he would utterly obliterate her. 

Yes, he could absolutely salvage this. He had to. 

The gentle press of a hand on his shoulder snapped him out of his reverie. His eyes flicked up to his benefactors, who were currently observing him closely; the nurse’s doughy face was set firmly in a bland mask of sympathy as Fortescue droned on in his high pitched nasally voice, “--understand if yeh aren’t ready. This has all been quite difficult for yeh, quite difficult indeed.” 

They were uncertain about him, yes. Understandably cautious, perhaps even the slightest bit wary--and he couldn’t blame them, after all, for thinking he might be unstable. 

But...they did not appear to be suspicious, their questions did not appear to be a prelude to arrest. 

_They think I was attacked._

By chance his eyes landed on Fortescue’s wand and suddenly, possibilities like ripe, toxic flowers began to unfurl and bloom in his mind. _A wand. I could get a wand._ Taking a deep breath, he reached inward, sought out the scattered remnants of his magic. 

It calmed him, helped him focus. 

He could work with this. 

_Yes. I was attacked. Viciously, brutally attacked._

His expression morphed into a desperately anguished grimace. “Sh-sh-she’s...insane,” he burst out, his voice raspy and weak, his hand clutched against the robes on his chest. 

All at once he had their undivided attention. 

“Who’s insane?” Fortescue questioned seriously, brows furrowing together almost comically in the center of his forehead, as if he’d strapped some poor furry animal’s tail to his face. 

Ethan ducked his head slightly to avoid distraction. “Her name is Buffy. She’s…” he choked up, then went on in a rush, “She blames me for sending her to prison, but I didn’t know that she was out--that she had escaped,” he rambled helplessly. “You see, she hates me because I testified against her, which was what got her sent to jail--but she did things….bad things. She wanted revenge..she wanted to kill me.” Drawing in a shaky breath, he added, “I tried to reason with her, I tried to get away, but...but--” 

“It’s alright, son. Yer safe now.”

“I’m not!” he practically wailed, rocking back and forth. “She..” he took a shuddering breath, “she’s quite unnaturally powerful, you see, physically. She snapped my wand. Broke it right into pieces. There was someone else there too, a man who helped her. He was wearing a hood... I...didn’t get a good look at his face.”

“What happened next?”

“And then...she had a blade...and she...she--” he broke off, too overcome to continue. It was almost shockingly easy to produce more tears. 

“Don’t you worry, son. We’ll find her.” 

Ethan stared, incredulous. Bloody hell, why didn’t he think of that? 

They could find her for him. They’d do all the bloody legwork. Yes, this was perfect. Plus, he loved delegating. Oh, yes. 

“But she could be anywhere. She’ll come for me if she can, I just know it….”

For a long beat Fortescue’s gaze was measured, then he huffed out a sigh. “Look, son, would yeh consent to letting us view your memory of the assault? We’ll still need your report, of course, but we’d have a face, yeh see. A clear visual reference to help us in our search.”

Ethan paled, momentarily taken aback. 

_Oh, fuck no._

He wasn’t about to let Gandalf and his Amazing Technicolor Nightgown go prancing about in his little gray cells, _thank you bloody much._

“I-- it’s still so--” he broke off. 

“Take yer time. I hate to even ask this of yeh, of course,but without something solid to go on, our chances of bringing her to justice are quite small, indeed. ” 

Justice. 

The word reverberated through his head like a bell. Justice. Yes. She would pay for what she did to him. She would suffer, as he was suffering now. 

It was the last, tiny nudge he needed. 

The look he gave Fortescue was plaintive. “Wait...please. Just give me a moment.” 

“Of course.” 

Closing his eyes, Ethan drew upon his magic, expertly weaving together in his mind various threads of images and snippets of sound into a tapestry that would become the memory he would serve up to them. Creating illusions had always been his forte, and here, within the confines of his imagination, Buffy was a cruel, dark and ferociously violent criminal, holding him hostage before brutalizing and maiming him. 

The memory he was fabricating wouldn’t necessarily withstand close, careful scrutiny, but it didn’t have to. It bought him time. 

And if by some freakish, astronomically improbable miracle she managed to evade wizarding law enforcement, at the very least he would have seriously fucked up her day. 

Sometimes, it was the little things that counted. 

He snapped his eyes up to Fortescue and swallowed audibly. “I’m ready.” 

As the old man raised his wand to Ethan’s temple he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smirking. 

Hook, line and sinker.

* * *

_In Tom’s hand was a diminutive lidded ceramic urn, burnished and incised around its rim with strange runes that he didn’t recognize. It was vaguely reminiscent of a canopic vessel, but that couldn’t be right because the markings didn’t appear to be even remotely Egyptian, or Phoenician, and in fact were not known to him at all._

_“Not a very good representation.” Buffy eyed the urn skeptically, then glanced coyly up at him through her lashes. She wore a rather fetching low cut, midnight blue confection of silk and organza that skimmed her curves enticingly, her lips a rich scarlet, silky, honey gold locks cascading in artful waves over her shoulders._

_She was close enough for him to make out the faint, paper thin line of a scar across her collarbone._

_Tom eyed her, his mouth unexpectedly going dry. “Representation of what?”_

_She ignored his question and smiled broadly, her teeth perfect and gleaming. “This is all very exciting. Well, for us anyway.”_

_Confusion flared within him. “This conversation doesn’t make any sense.”_

_“It’s a dream, silly. Sense is optional.” she replied,shrugging. “Besides, possession is nine tenths of the law.”_

_Before he could draw breath to reply she pulled her arm back, then slammed her fist straight through his sternum, the crack of bone explosively loud in his ears--_

With a convulsive jerk he awoke, panting and sweating and it took a moment to realize he was on the couch in his darkened flat, and he felt a presence--there was someone there, on the couch, sitting by his hip. 

He had his wand pointed at the intruder’s throat before his brain caught up to his eyes and he recognized it was Buffy. 

He was absolutely floored. Not only was she conscious, she was up and about. 

Without flinching she glanced pointedly down at the length of pale yew wand, then met his eyes and said evenly, “Nice reflexes. We need to talk.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've made revisions to all the chapters, some subtle, some not as much. 
> 
> This chapter was done and posted to ffnet in February, but real life has been a merciless bastard. Anyway, writing isn't really a thing for me at the moment, but I figured I should at least add this chapter.

**Chapter Six**

**October 1945**

“So. How long have I been out?”

Tom blinked for a moment, then pointed his wand off to one side and drew a small tight circle in the air. A glowing clock face appeared, hovering in midair. He blew out a breath, his expression visibly surprised, before dismissively slashing his wand through the air once and making the little clock vanish. Even for someone like Buffy, who was no stranger to all manner of phenomena weird and supernatural, the unaffectedly casual, almost offhand manner in which he wielded his magical power was startling. 

“Nearly fifteen hours,” he said, then paused, his eyes flicking back to her, “give or take.”

“Give or take?”

“How long have you been sitting here?” His voice was deep, still husky from sleep, but his tone seemed knowing, maybe even amused. 

Feeling her face flush slightly, she shook her head. “No, no, I woke up just before you.” Inwardly, she winced. _Nice. That wasn’t the least bit lame or unconvincing._

The truth was,she’d woken up in an unfamiliar, narrow bed, wrapped in a fluffy, full length bathrobe, realizing fairly quickly that she was not in a hospital. Unsure of where she was, she’d tiptoed out into the darkened sitting room of what appeared to be a modest, sparsely decorated flat, without any recollection of how she’d gotten there. 

Or precisely when she’d acquired a lovely new set of bandages, placed on parts generally not touched by members of the opposite sex until they were well past the handshake phase of a relationship. Great. Just what she needed, an awkward conversation about whether or not her benefactor was certified in First Aid becauseif not... _Sure, let’s just skip over introductions, flirting over coffee and dive straight into intimate wound care._

Given the alternative, though, she’d take mortification over the morgue any day. 

In the dark, she checked over herself, rotating her shoulders to loosen up her achy, still healing muscles, surprised that she was in far better condition than she would have expected given how badly Ethan had ripped her open with his patented glove of evil. Not even Slayer healing could repair severe tendon and muscle damage that quickly. Tom must have helped the process along with magic. She was still fairly sore, but another day or so of taking it easy and she guessed she would be good as new.

For a few minutes she stood, silently watching the man who had just saved her life toss and turn, dark, wavy hair tousled in slumber, his long, lean frame sprawled across the somewhat threadbare looking couch. She moved closer, bare feet padding soundlessly across the thin, woven carpet until she stood directly over him. His wand lay on the coffee table next to her, and she regarded it thoughtfully. It was quite unique - pale, carved, almost resembling animal bone--though there was a spare, harsh sort of beauty to it, not unlike the man who wielded it. 

Clearly, Tom and his magic stick played a significant role in her being _not dead_. Which was of the good for obvious reasons, but Buffy wasn’t ready to trip over herself thanking him after... just...what the hell had happened anyway? She’d never experienced anything quite like it, and though some details were still fuzzy, she was reasonably certain he had tried to waltz in and take a tour around the inside of her head. Which was about ten different kinds of not okay, no matter that he’d rescued her, or how he tried to frame it as a friendly game of _Getting to Know You_. 

She was so not falling for that. Her dismal track record with the opposite sex notwithstanding, she had _boundaries_. 

He stirred and moaned quietly, as if having a bad dream, and Buffy found herself sitting down on the couch next to him, watching him as he grew more restless and agitated. 

Damn, but he really was easy on the eyes. Powerful, too. 

Her mind briefly flitted to the image of him standing in front of her, magic rippling and surrounding him like some sort of dark glorious halo, and she shivered. From what she’d seen and experienced of him in just that short space of time, she instinctively sensed that he was capable of utilizing his magic and charisma as weapons, like a cobra that disarms and hypnotizes with its beauty before it strikes. And if the brief, enticing glimpses of that dark, potent energy were anything to go by, that abundance of good looks and charm shielded what were most likely jagged, deadly edges underneath. 

He was pretty, for sure, but...dangerous. 

_But you like dangerous_. 

NO. 

She scrunched her face up as she mentally squashed the irksome little voice. 

He was _trouble_ \- the kind that with a beguiling smile on his face and casual flick of his finger, would send all her carefully structured defenses and barriers toppling like dominoes. 

Just to see what would happen. 

Just because he could. 

She stared at him some more as he began to toss and mumble. 

So what if he was smart, powerful, and it looked like he had some decently defined muscles under that shirt to go with those chiselled cheekbones? God, those _cheekbones_ -

Nope, she sternly reminded herself, danger _BAD_. Not falling for that. _Or him_. Just because he’d managed to hit the jackpot in the genetic lottery wasn't enough to -

Barely a second later she nearly gasped out loud as he lurched upright, wild eyed, his wand flying into his hand. 

 

* * *

“I must have been far more fatigued than I realized,” he said, hoisting himself into a seated position. 

It was now his turn watch her, apparently, and her lingering embarrassment over scoping him out so thoroughly while he slept prompted her to avert her eyes, using the pretense of glancing around the spartan flat as he regarded her with unabashed curiosity. She noticed, to her enormous relief, Faith’s katana atop the small kitchen table, as well as something that was...vaguely identifiable. As her brain puzzled to process what she was seeing, his voice distracted her. 

“How are you even-” He muttered in disbelief, then broke off, almost as if he’d caught himself voicing his thought aloud. 

“How am I what?”

“On your feet? Fourteen hours ago you were -”

“I’m good,” she cut him off, then shrugged, trying to brush off and downplay the discomfort she was feeling at the intensity of his scrutiny. For some reason making any prolonged eye contact with him right now produced a sensation that was somewhat similar to what she’d experienced with him during their mind meld thing - strange and shockingly, unexpectedly intimate, and damnit, her face was heating up again, wasn’t it? What was wrong with her? “Fine. Possibly even dandy,” she declared with a confidence she didn’t really feel, retreating back a few steps to give herself some distance. 

He stared at her for a second, brows slightly scrunched in confusion. “Dandy?” 

“I..I heal fast.” 

“Evidently.”

Ugh, this was uncomfortable. Why did he have to be so pretty? 

“I’m really curious, why didn’t you take me to a hospital?” She sincerely hoped he hadn't brought her back to his place just to perv on her.

Swiftly, he stood and strode right up to her. His demeanor shifted abruptly, becoming serious, almost stern. And he still really had a thing for getting in people’s personal space, apparently. “Because, Buffy, you are not a _witch_ ,” he said, enunciating the last word sharply. 

“Obviously,” she replied, confusion and irritation escalating. “What does that have to do with anything?” 

“Because nonwizarding folk who have the misfortune of encountering our world are summarily _obliviated._ ” he stated gravely, looming over her. 

_Oh._

Whatever obliviated was, it didn’t sound good. But of course, she couldn’t know for sure, because Mister Wizard wasn’t exactly forthcoming with details, which was beginning to piss her _just a tad_. If he wanted to play twenty questions he should really consider providing her with coffee, before she began to exhibit unpleasant side effects of caffeine withdrawal. Like punching him in the face. “What does that even _mean_?”

“All of your memories of us would be completely erased. You’d be dropped off on the street, thinking you’d simply bumped your head or some such rot. It's how our world has remained largely undetected for centuries,” he paused a moment, then added, a hard edge to his words, “it’s not always clean, or precisely done. Inevitably there are gaps - in some instances the recipient’s mind is...damaged. Often _permanently_.” 

Her dismay must have been clearly written across her features, because he started to speak, but she cut him off. “Seriously? It’s just standard operating procedure, regardless of the circumstances?” _Jesus, and I thought the Council was uptight._

His posture was tense, and it occurred to her that he was quite possibly speaking from experience. “I don’t make the rules,” he replied, an almost bitter undertone to his words, “though one day I hope to change that.” 

She shook her head and whispered, “no, it’s okay. I get it. It makes sense...in a completely screwed up, horrifying kind of way.” 

Because she understood, probably better than anyone the need for secrecy, the need to operate in shadows, hidden, and alone. If the Watcher’s Council could have wiped her friends’ memories under the pretext of protecting her secret identity, they wouldn’t have hesitated. _Safeguard your existence at any cost._ It was a mindset she’d never subscribed to, and she’d essentially torched her relationship with them, not to mention a couple thousand years of standard Slayer protocol over the issue. 

Still, the notion that an entire society routinely and cavalierly went all Men in Black on anyone who haplessly stumbled across their path was chilling, especially if they willfully disregarded the harm they caused in the process. Willow’s one disastrous, ill considered foray into memory spells nearly got them all killed, and the sense of violation and betrayal of trust from that single botched spell had wreaked almost irreparable damage to their friendship, as well as to Willow and Tara’s relationship. 

So Tom had whisked her back to his place and healed her himself to spare her possible brain damage. That counted for something, right? She groaned inwardly. She was seriously not caffeinated enough to deal with this level of internal conflict. Plus, he was still right there, in her space, his eyes searching her face. 

“I didn’t want that to happen to you,” he said, quietly. 

A pang of remorse for her impulse to face punch him darted through her.

“I appreciate that.”

Shit. His nearness, his intensity, his stupid pretty face - it was too much. He was like some kind of charismatic danger magnet, stirring up all her worst impulses, and she needed to get some distance before she did something hugely irresponsible and rash. Like date him. 

She needed to bail. Fast. “Hey, do you have a phone handy? I need to let my friends know where I am.”

“Telephone?” 

For an instant he seemed completely and genuinely caught off guard, as if she’d just asked him a question in a foreign language, then his expression shifted as comprehension took hold and he said, “I’m sorry, I don’t have one here - but I can take you to one.”

“You don’t have a phone? How about next door? Maybe one of the neighbors?” 

He smiled, ruefully. “I’m afraid no one uses them around here.”

 _What kind of weirdos don't use telephones?_

_Tap. Tap_. 

“Then...how do you-”

 _Tap! Tap! Tap!_

She broke off and turned toward the source of the noise. It was at the window. Her eyes widened as she saw a magnificent, tawny eagle owl flapping its wings impatiently, pecking at the glass. 

_I had to ask._

With a subtle wave of his hand, Tom opened the window, and Buffy watched, dumbfounded as the owl swooped through the room and dropped a neatly folded parchment into Tom’s hand, then perched on the back of the couch. What the hell was she even witnessing? 

“Thank you, Titan,” he said, as he wordlessly summoned what appeared to be a small, square brown biscuit, which he offered the owl. The impressively large bird hooted once, snatched the treat, then turned and launched itself back out the open window, disappearing into the clear blue midday sky. Clearly, this was a regular occurrence. 

She jabbed a finger in the direction of the window as Tom unfolded the paper and scanned it. 

“So...no telephones, but you send notes. By bird. Because of course you do.” She met his eyes and held his gaze, her expression hardening. She wanted information. Now. “Tom...where are we, exactly?” 

“I told you. London,” he answered, pocketing the note. 

“Mmhmm,” she nodded, “that you did. Look, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not familiar with every obscure custom in the Land of Tweed, but I’m pretty sure I would have heard about Her Majesty’s Secret Pigeon Post.” 

“Owl post.”

“Whatever.” There was an unmistakable edge to her voice now. 

He regarded her steadily for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “Alright. We are in my flat in part of the magical community.” Moving to the window he gestured toward the bustling street below. “That street there is called Diagon Alley. Technically, this place exists within, but is...separate from Metropolitan London. It’s part of a world _unseen_ \- protected from and invisible to those without magic, and unfortunately, by extension, nonmagical devices do not work within our boundaries.”

“Like phones.”

“Precisely.”

It was difficult to suppress a growl of frustration. She needed to get out of here _now_ , to let Giles know what was happening - especially with Ethan being on the loose. She took a cleansing breath, then squared her shoulders. “Listen, I truly appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I need to get home. I’d like to get my clothes and get to that phone, please.”

“Oh.I’m afraid your clothing was...damaged beyond even my ability to repair.” 

_“Excuse me?_ ” Even she was surprised at how her voice took on a sharp, strident edge. It wasn’t helping that he didn’t even have the decency to look sorry. 

“Your clothes were destroyed,” he repeated, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Honestly, you don’t strike me as the sort who would allow false modesty to supercede your survival.”

Her jaw dropped. 

_Okay, face punching is totally back on the table._

“You can’t possibly be that clueless.”

He went rigid with indignation. “Clueless?” he echoed, disbelievingly, “you...you aren’t actually suggesting I committed some sort of impropriety toward you while you were unconscious, are you?” 

“You really don’t understand why I might find this upsetting, do you?”

“No, I think I understand _perfectly well_. Tell me this, though. Would you have honestly preferred I preserve your clothing? Or your life?” The volume of his voice increased, and again she felt the fine prickle of energy skating across her skin, only this time the sensation intensified, as if to mirror his growing agitation. 

It wasn’t... _unpleasant._

 _No. Danger magnet, remember?_ She bit the inside of her cheek to keep her focus from wavering. 

“Do you believe I was unaware how you might possibly react? You were _bleeding to death_ , you ridiculous woman! Yes, under the circumstances, I _chose_ to transgress that particular boundary,” he stalked closer to her, drew himself up to his full height, and added, decisively, “and I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again!”

Damn it, he had a point. Under similar conditions, wouldn’t she do the same thing? 

Still not off the hook, though. 

“Okay. But you shouldn’t have gone into my head. That was inappropriate.” 

Several moments of tense silence hung between them, and she wondered if they had perhaps reached an impasse, but all at once the static hum of magic dissipated. 

“Fair enough.” His tone was ever so slightly grudging. Then the corners of his mouth curved up, and he said, wryly, “You were right, you know.”

“About what?” 

“You don’t do helpless very well, at all.” 

“I’m pretty terrible at it, actually,” she deadpanned. 

“Look, I don’t know about you, but I’m famished. Would you consider accompanying me to lunch? After we eat I’ll take you directly to the nearest telephone that I know of. Is that amenable to you?”

“I would love to,but I'm afraid I don't have anything decent to wear.” 

He graced her with a devilish smirk that sent a flutter through her stomach, summoning his wand and raising it toward her in one smooth motion. 

“Hold still,” he commanded, swishing the wand back and forth a few times. At once, she felt a tingle of energy cascade over her. Looking down, she watched in amazement as the robe shifted and transformed into a full skirted, knee length dress. She peered down at her feet at the pair of elegant, shiny leather kitten heeled pumps he’d created for her. 

_Well, bippity boppity boo._

 

 

 


End file.
